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X 





PADRE 

A RED CROSS CHAPLAIN IN FRANCE 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


THE CLOUD 

A stirring presenta- 
tion of the main issues 
of the war so far as 
basic principles are 
concerned. 

50 cents net 


E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
NEW YORK 


PADRE 

A RED CROSS CHAPLAIN 
IN FRANCE 

BY 

SARTELL PRENTICE, D.D. 

AUTHOR OF “THE CLOUD,” ETC. 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AVENUE 




Copyright, 1919, 

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 


All Rights Reserved 




AUG 16 1919 


Printed in the United Stales of America 


©CL A 5 2 9 6 0 6 

Recorded 


MY WIFE 


AND TO 
MY BOYS 

PIERREPONT ISHAM PRENTICE 
RECENTLY SECOND LIEUTENANT, F.A., U. S. A. 
AND 


SARTELL PRENTICE, JR 



PREFACE 


A T the request of the American Red 
Cross, received through the War 
Commission of the Reformed 
(Dutch) Church, I sailed in June, 1918, to 
serve as a Red Cross Hospital Chaplain in 
the army hospitals of France. 

This is a narrative of personal relations, 
of intimate contact between the chaplain 
and sick and wounded boys, first and prin- 
cipally in Base Hospital 101, at St. Nazaire, 
and then in Evacuation Hospital 18, where 
we were near enough the lines to enable us 
to hear the constant rumbling of the guns 
and to receive the wounded straight from the 
battle-field. 

This book does not pretend to be the his- 
tory of any hospital. It is merely a record 
of the things I saw, the work to which I had 
set my hand. I wish it might be otherwise, 

vii 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


that I could tell adequately the story of that 
hospital at St. Nazaire, where every mem- 
ber of the Staff and every nurse could tell a 
tale of drama and of comedy, of unselfish 
service finely rendered, and of work well 
done. We were, however, each of us, so 
pressed by the tasks we had in hand, the 
hours were so crowded and the days so full, 
that we hardly had time to do more than 
glance over the fence into the next man’s 
field — our own row kept us busy. 

I bring this story to you, not because it 
is more dramatic or in any way better than 
the tale these other men might tell, but just 
because it is the only one that I really know 
from the beginning to the end. Of the other 
stories I caught only broken echoes. 

Before passing on I want to acknowledge 
my debt to Pierrepont Prentice for his help- 
ful criticism of the manuscript and his re- 
vision of the proof. 

Sartell Prentice. 

Nyaclc , N. F., 

April m, 1919. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER 

I 3 

II 16 

III 29 

IV 54 

V 72 

VI 92 

VII 107 

VIII 128 

IX 165 

X 177 

XI 194 

XII . » 207 

XIII 225 

XIV 241 

XV 262 

XVI . . . 283 

XVII 297 

XVIII 318 


PADRE 

A RED CROSS CHAPLAIN IN FRANCE 

CHAPTER I 

T HE ocean in 1918 was very different 
from the ocean of 1913; the voyage 
to Europe had become an adventure 
and oftentimes a tragedy. London was at 
least twice as far from Sandy Hook as it 
used to be, and for some who sailed there 
was no road. 

No one traveled for pleasure; the ordi- 
nary crowds of tourists, with their red 
Baedekers and Bradshaws, were missing 
from the decks. There were women on 
board, but they wore the blue of the army 
nurse, or the khaki of the Red Cross or the 
Y. W. C. A., dark colors that would blend 
quickly into the dusk and not betray us in 
3 


4 


PADRE 


the twilight. Over twenty thousand business 
men crossed with us, but they, also, wore the 
khaki; their business lay in the St. Mihiel 
sector and in the Argonne, and they dealt 
in cartridges, bayonets, and shells. 

Our voyage over was comparatively un- 
eventful. Barring one incautious shark who 
raised his head and made an unwise ripple 
on the surface of the sea, to be promptly 
greeted by the look-out in our crow-nest as 
a “Submarine on the port bow” and die ten 
seconds later a violent death from the guns 
of the Teutonic, nothing came near to dis- 
turb our peace of mind. 

But on her very last trip over, wrapped 
in a heavy fog, the Orduna had seen a grim, 
gray shape rise from the sea, dripping with 
water and shining as she rolled in the long 
swells. Lying over on her side as the helm 
went down hard, the Orduna wheeled to 
starboard in the attempt to ram the sub- 
marine, but she missed by inches. Then the 
guns cracked; the first shot failed, for the 


PADRE 


5 


target was too near to enable them to de- 
press the guns, but the second caught the 
enemy amidships and crashed through her 
thin plates of steel. She rolled once, twice* 
then went bubbling down, and the gray mist 
and the gray sea blotted her out. 

Two of our stewards had been on the 
Lusitania, another on the Transylvania ; 
some had been submarined on the Atlantic 
and others in the Mediterranean; one had 
sailed three times on ships that never reached 
their harbors. To such as these, perhaps, 
our voyage seemed tame; yet there were 
some things that diff erentiated it from voy- 
ages that we had made in pre-war days. No 
whistle blew at noon by which we might set 
our watches. There was no chart posted in 
the companion-way giving the day’s run with 
our latitude and longitude. There was 
nothing to tell us where we were ; we simply 
sailed out of New York harbor and lost our- 
selves for fourteen days. The sun told us 
nothing, for sometimes it was to starboard, 


6 


PADRE 


sometimes to port, and occasionally it 
slipped around to the stern. We staggered 
all the way across, to right, to left, from 
port to starboard. One evening when I 
came on deck the convoy was boxing the 
compass, with one ship going astern. 

Instead of the occasional sail on the hori- 
zon or the smoke of a distant steamer, we 
sailed with ships from the seven seas close 
up on either hand. There were ships from 
the Chinese waters, ships from the Pacific 
shores of South America, ships that knew 
best the coasts of Africa, and some of them 
had never seen New York harbor before 
since their keels were laid. 

And we were painted gorgeously, de- 
liriously. Broad bands of white, black, blue, 
gold, and green mounted the sides, leaped 
the rails, ascended the deck house, and 
climbed the funnels. Once or twice the day 
presented us with a rainbow, but that left 
us quite unmoved — it seemed so tame com- 
pared with the splendors of our camouflage. 


PADRE 


7 


One evening, however, I saw something 
that gave me a realization of the defensive 
value of our coloring. 

The light had almost faded from the sky, 
leaving only that broad white band which 
sometimes lingers long on the horizon line. 
A mile away one of our fleet was sailing 
with a belt of white camouflage amidships, 
which ran for some distance straight fore 
and aft and then turned upwards until it 
reached her rails. As I watched her it 
seemed as if that white streak was a part of 
the horizon line and that I was looking 
through the ship. How deceptive it must 
have been to a German who saw it through 
the tossing, foam-swept glass of the peri- 
scope! 

There was another vessel in our convoy 
with two funnels, so painted that she seemed 
to be not one ship, but two single-funnel 
steamers, for the bow of the vessel and the 
forward funnel seemed to be farther away 
than the stern and the aft funnel. Indeed, 


8 


PADRE 


we had a discussion about her one day that 
was only settled when we brought our field 
glasses to bear upon her. 

We felt the difference between this and 
other voyages most at night. Then the 
steward came around to close our portholes, 
place a thick sheet of cardboard against the 
glass, and shut the wooden blind. Having 
screwed this blind fast he went off with the 
key. However, we were glad to have lights 
in the stateroom, even if we had to do with- 
out fresh air. 

But there were no lights in the salons, 
even though the windows were stopped in 
the same effectual way. You groped in 
Stygian darkness for a match amid the 
tables of the smoking room, guided only by 
the faint glow that dulled and brightened 
from mysterious cigars and cigarettes as 
they performed evolutions in the air without 
visible means of support. The companion- 
ways were absolutely dark, and you bumped 
your way along without apology after the 


PADRE 


third day out. Heavy curtains screened the 
doors leading to the deck, and a sentry was 
stationed there to see that you passed 
quickly out and that the door was shut. 
Orders were issued forbidding smoking or 
the lighting of matches on deck after sun- 
set, and guards paced the deck to enforce 
the orders. 

When we drew near the Danger Zone a 
notice was posted requesting all who had 
field glasses to lend them to the look-outs, 
and then soldiers were stationed at intervals 
along the deck, as well as at bow and stern, 
to scan the seas for that little ripple of white 
which betrays the periscope. 

We were forbidden to go anywhere with- 
out our life-belts. We were told to wear 
them or carry them, but never to be without 
them. As we had life-boat drill at unex- 
pected moments when you might as well 
appear in nothing at all as show up without 
your life-belt properly tied and adjusted for 
inspection, we slept with the nuisances, not 


10 


PADRE 


on, but within easy reach, we ate with them 
under our feet in the dining-salon, we 
walked with them when on deck — the before 
and after dinner stroll was called “The Baby 
Promenade” — and we sat with them on our 
laps. 

One afternoon, when I had the deck to 
myself for a little while, I laid my belt down 
on a bench, placing a book on top; then I 
mounted guard and paced up and down in 
front of it. Two young ladies came out on 
deck and passed me, chatting innocently to- 
gether. When I reached the end of my beat, 
and turned I saw a skirt vanishing around 
a corner — and my book lying alone on the 
bench. I suppose the lady felt that if one 
belt was good two were better. Another 
day I was sitting with a substitute belt at 
my side when the whistle blew for boat-drill. 
A girl sitting near sprang up, grabbed my 
new belt, and ran for stations. As this 
seemed to be a new kind of tag I seized the 
nearest belt and joined her in the race, but 


PADRE 


11 


nothing makes you feel so strongly that you 
are among friendly people as to know that 
so many nice young ladies feel that they 
know you well enough to borrow your life- 
belt on occasion. Introductions are wasted 
in such circumstances! 

We had, I suppose, the usual number of 
timid souls who slept with their shoes and 
puttees on and talked darkly of the uncer- 
tainty of life. There were fifteen minutes 
of every day when I shared their terrors and 
was as pessimistic as any soul on board. 
Those minutes lay between 7 :15 and 7 :30 
in the morning; they were ushered in when 
the steward opened my door to say, “Your 
bawth is ready, sir.” I was always in a blue 
funk lest the Germans should select that 
hour for their work. 

On Saturday evening, two days before we 
reached Liverpool, the battleship Montana, 
which had been escorting us, swung around, 
headed astern, and vanished in the gray 
mists that were enveloping us. We knew at 


PADRE 


12 

once that British destroyers — or would they 
be American? — were about to pick us up 
and convoy us to Liverpool; the Montana 
would not have left us else. And sure 
enough, early in the morning, just as the 
faintest suggestion of dawn was appearing 
in the eastern sky, they came up over the 
horizon. There was a swift twinkling of 
lights as they signaled to the converted 
cruiser Teutonic, and then they fell in line 
on either side of us. When I came on deck 
for a short, quick walk before breakfast I 
counted nine of them, some to port and some 
to starboard, with one zigzagging back and 
forth across our bows. 

So we sailed on, rounded the north of Ire- 
land and sailed down the muddy waters of 
the Irish sea, where, with trawlers ahead of 
us, destroyers about us, and dirigibles over- 
head, we reached the lightship at the Liver- 
pool bar at five o’clock on Monday after- 
noon, and picked up our pilot. 

Then came a scene I shall never forget, 


PADRE 


13 


but to appreciate it you must remember the 
situation of the armies on the Western 
Front. Since March the Germans had 
struck the Allied line four times with tre- 
mendous power, in the desperate attempt to 
win a decision before the United States 
could put an army in the field. Each thrust 
had driven the English or the French back 
from ten to twenty miles, until the enemy 
were barely forty miles from Paris. The 
supremely important railroad from Paris to 
Nancy had been cut near Dormans, while 
the Germans — with their guns only six miles 
away — were shelling the Paris-Calais line at 
Amiens. I was told that the French Gov- 
ernment was very doubtful of its ability to 
keep its hold on the capital, while the Eng- 
lish, fearing lest the German wedge might 
sever their connections with the French, had 
formed plans for the withdrawal of their 
forces to a new line running from Havre to 
Calais. The very air was heavy with fore- 
bodings. 


14 


PADRE 


When our convoy, carrying some twenty 
thousand American troops, sailed up the 
Mersey and drew near to Liverpool we 
heard a continuous sound, not unlike the 
humming of a hive of bees, but shrill. It did 
not seem to come from any particular direc- 
tion, or to be like anything that I had heard 
before. I was tempted to think that I had 
imagined it, or that it was merely a singing 
in my ears. But as we came nearer the city 
the sound grew steadily louder ; we could see 
faint, slow-moving dots on the sandy 
beaches where the river washed the shores. 
Then we saw that men, women, and children 
were running down to greet us, cheering 
and hailing these who had crossed the seas 
to take their places at their side. When we 
came up to the city all the streets leading to 
the Esplanade were black with the crowds 
that were hurrying towards the shores; the 
Esplanade itself was crowded; the windows 
of the houses, even their roofs, were packed ; 
destroyers and trawlers passing out saluted 


PADRE 


15 


us with voice and whistle ; ferryboats ran out 
of their way to greet us, and we answered 
them all with songs and cheers and jests. 
The roar of England’s welcome rose faint 
in the distance in front of us, thundered at 
our side, and died out behind us as we moved 
along. So we came to England, with our 
heads high, but praying God that it was not 
too late. 


CHAPTER II 


W E reached London — without our 
baggage, which had gone astray in 
Liverpool — on the evening of July 
second. The streets were filled with the uni- 
forms of all the Imperial armies that had 
rallied at England’s call, from India around 
the world to India again. The armies of the 
Allies were represented, too, but these uni- 
forms were not as much in evidence as we 
found them in Paris. Most prevalent of all, 
however, was the blue that told of the 
wounded and the black that told of the dead. 

Several times we passed companies of 
civilians headed by a band, marching for the 
last time in mufti, taking the first steps 
along the road that led to Flanders, where 
they would fill the gaps left in the British 
line by the great drive on Amiens — and per- 
16 


PADRE 17 

haps leave new gaps when their turn came 
for action for other men to fill. 

Almost all the other members of the Red 
Cross who had sailed with me, having re- 
ceived their passports properly vised, 
crossed over to France on the following 
night, but a great mass-meeting, with Lord 
Bryce presiding and Winston Churchill 
speaking, was to be held in Central Hall on 
the morning of July fourth, while a com- 
memorative service was to be held in West- 
minster Abbey in the afternoon. I was ex- 
ceedingly anxious to attend these services; 
it seemed stupid to spend the Fourth of July 
traveling between London and Paris, miss- 
ing the great ceremonies in both cities. So 
I delayed my channel crossing for twenty- 
four hours. 

The next morning I started early that I 
might spend a few minutes in the Abbey. 
Four American soldiers were standing just 
within the doors, looking for some one to 
take them around the aisles and chapels. I 


18 


PADRE 


told them what to do, told them something, 
too, of the story of the Abbey, of the dead 
who slept here, and of the pageants these 
old aisles had witnessed. Then I asked if 
one of them would care to come with me to 
the meeting in Central Hall, for which I had 
received an extra ticket. A boy from Mis- 
souri was detailed to accept my invitation, 
and as we walked along he told me very 
simply about his folks, of his mother and 
what she was doing in the Red Cross and in 
her Church; how she hated to have him go, 
although she would not hold him back; but 
his married sister lived very near and he felt) 
easier to know that she was not alone. 

I will not stop to describe the meeting in 
Central Hall; it is only history now, and it 
was discussed at the time in all the journals 
of the Allied world. You must imagine a 
great hall packed and jammed, with the 
tiers of seats on the platform pressed close 
together ; all seats and standing room in the 
gallery as well as on the floor occupied and 


PADRE 


19 


additional chairs in every aisle. Even the 
streets outside were crowded with a great 
mass who stood throughout the afternoon to 
see Admiral Sims, or the American General 
Biddle, Lord Bryce or Winston Churchill 
as they entered or left. Add to the picture 
enough flags to equip an army, and an Eng- 
lish regimental band playing a succession of 
American airs, national and popular. When 
they played “Marching Through Georgia” 
the audience rose to their feet, evidently 
under the impression that this was our na- 
tional air. As we had each been presented 
with a small American flag, the entire hall 
became a waving mass of color when, from 
time to time, the audience vented their en- 
thusiasm by leaping to their feet and waving 
their flags high in air. I think the cheering 
must have been heard across the Thames 
when Winston Churchill said: 

“The essential purposes of this war do not admit 
of compromise. If we were fighting for territorial 
gain, or were engaged in a dynastic or commercial 


20 


PADRE 


quarrel, no doubt these would be matters that could 
be adjusted by bargaining. But this war has become 
an open conflict between Christian civilization and 
scientific barbarism. The line is clearly drawn be- 
tween the nations where the people own the govern- 
ment and the nations where the governments own the 
people. This is a struggle between right and wrong, 
and as such it is not capable of any solution that is 
not absolute. Germany must be beaten ; Germany 
must know that she is beaten; and her defeat must 
be expressed in terms and facts that will for all time 
deter others from emulating her crimes and safe- 
guard us against their repetition/’ 

Not an Englishman in that great hall but 
had seen some face he loved vanish in the 
mists of war ; the Allied armies had suffered 
one defeat upon another. For months 
hardly one cheering word had come from 
across the Channel; their regiments were 
standing with their backs to Amiens, and 
Amiens once lost, it is hard to see how they 
could have kept contact with their Allies. 
The enemy were nearer England than they 
had been since the dangerous days, the al- 
most hopeless days, of nineteen hundred and 


PADRE 21 

fourteen, so near, indeed, that London had 
heard the rumble of the guns. 

And yet this man could speak of the de- 
feat of Germany as the inevitable issue of 
the War. Why? Because this was “a 
struggle between right and wrong,” and in 
that struggle such a nation as Germany had 
revealed herself to be “Must be beaten, must 
know that she is beaten” ; because on the one 
side stood that 

“Heathen heart that puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard, 

All valiant dust that builds on dust 
And guarding calls not Thee to guard, 

while on the other side stood the 

“God of our fathers, known of old, 

Lord of our far-flung battle line, 

Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
Dominion over palm and pine." 

We all sang “God Save the King” and 
started for the doors, but the gallery was not 
yet sung out and some one began “America.” 
We were half way through the first verse 


22 


PADRE 


before the organist caught the idea and the 
place. When we went in and as we came 
out we were met by street vendors who were 
driving a brisk trade in American flags. 

After lunch at Gatti’s I went to the Ab- 
bey, which was filling rapidly when I reached 
its doors, but my uniform secured me a seat 
in the choir. From the carven stall I 
watched the multitude come in, crowding 
the transepts, the choir, and the aisles. Some 
were in khaki, more in black, but these were 
the only colors except the white of the huge 
marble statues standing over the graves of 
England’s mighty dead. The notes of the 
organ rose and fell, filling the vast spaces 
of the great church for a little while and then 
were silent. We all sang “God Save the 
King” and, later in the afternoon, “The 
Battle Hymn of the Republic.” 

After the stately words of the Evening 
Prayer the preacher for the day, Dean 
Ryle, paid his tribute to America, to the 
armies that every day were pouring into 


PADRE 


England from the west and every day were 
sailing from her Channel ports, taking as his 
text, “A brother is born for adversity,” As 
the day wore on and the light failed, as the 
shadows grew heavier around the great col- 
umns and through the aisles, the stone effi- 
gies on the monuments seemed to form an- 
other silent audience, standing motionless in 
the twilight of the Abbey. 

Centuries ago Israel’s leader, taking his 
farewell of the armies he had often led to 
battle, said: “This stone is a witness, for 
it hath heard all the words that I have 
spoken unto you this day.” In that ancient 
Church, with the dead of centuries gone 
about you, it was not difficult to dream that 
these stone effigies of the Edwards, the 
Henrys, and the Richards, who had also led 
England’s armies to the plains of France; 
Wolfe, who won Canada; Howe, who fell at 
Ticonderoga; Chatham, who, although dy- 
ing, was carried into the House of Lords to 
protest against the withdrawal of England’s 


PADRE 


24 > 

forces by land and sea and the “dismember- 
ment of this ancient and most noble mon- 
archy” — it was not hard to dream that their 
marble images were also our witnesses and 
heard the words we spoke that day. Finally 
the notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner” 
rose and rang triumphantly through the 
misty vaults and arches, while Burgoyne 
slept peacefully in his Abbey grave. 

But of all that I saw in London that which 
stirred me most was the sight of the flag of 
the United States flying in solitary state 
from the tower of the Abbey, and again fly- 
ing side by side with the British flag, and 
from the same standard, over the Houses of 
Parliament. That was something no visitor 
had ever seen before, and it is hardly prob- 
able that it will ever be seen again ; no com- 
pliment could have been more graceful. 

The next afternoon I left London for 
France. While my baggage was being 
brought down I went to the porter to ask 
him to call a cab. He was, as I remember 


PADRE 


25 


him, a tall man, very pale and thin, wearing 
the hotel livery ; a dark green frock coat with" 
a narrow gold edging along the lapels and 
down the front, with two narrow gold bands 
about the cuff, a double row of brass but- 
tons, and a visored cap bearing the insignia 
of the Hotel. I noticed him now for the 
first time, because I had just been told that 
he had been at Gallipoli, where he had been 
shot through the stomach, and was only wait- 
ing now until he should regain strength 
enough to return to the lines. 

He replied to my request for a cab, “A 
cab, sir? Certainly, sir. Just a moment, 
sir.” And he walked off to the corner of 
Piccadilly to stop a passing taxi. I turned 
to leave my key at the office and check up 
my baggage. Presently I heard his voice 
again, “Your cab is at the door, sir. Are 
all your pieces here? Very good, sir.” 
Then, as he closed the door of the cab be- 
hind me he added, “Thank you, sir.” 

But this man had been at Gallipoli, wear- 


26 


PADRE 


ing another uniform. At Gallipoli, where, 
under the death star of a blazing sun, with a 
plague of flies and vermin, with a pint and 
a half of luke-warm water a day to moderate 
the thirst that never could be quenched, men 
had charged through a night of smoke and 
dust from exploding shells to capture Lone 
Pine Hill. They took it and kept it, al- 
though some sections of the line were held 
only by one or two wounded men. They 
held it when the Turks, with bomb and bay- 
onet, came down “Wave after wave, shoul- 
der to shoulder, shouting the name of God.” 
Through five days when the “fight was one 
long personal scrimmage in the midst of 
explosions” they held it, 

“Living, eating, and sleeping in that gallery of the 
mine of death, in a half darkness lit by great glares, 
in filth, heat, and corpses, amid rotting, dying and 
mutilated men, with death blasting at the doors only 
a few feet away, and intense and bloody fighting, 
hand to hand, with bombs, bayonets, and knives, for 
hours together by night and by day, until the Turks 
gave up the struggle when the dead were five to the 


PADRE 


n 


yard in that line of works, and were heaped in a 
kind of double wall all along the sides of the 
trench.” — Masefield. 

And this man had come from Gallipoli I 
He had exchanged the uniform of the army 
for the livery of the hotel, but the day was 
coming when he would doff the green and 
gold to don the khaki, when with canteen 
and helmet dangling at his belt, with his 
pack upon his back and his rifle at his shoul- 
der, he would march away for the line that 
was “carrying on” in Flanders. But to-day 
he was calling cabs for civilians with his 
“Yes, sir; certainly, sir; very good, sir; 
thank you, sir,” 

That night I sailed from Southampton 
for Havre. There were no lights in the 
cabins, on the decks, or in the heavens above, 
for the sky was moonless and starless. We 
went without convoy, trusting to our twenty- 
two knots an hour for safety. I stayed on 
deck until the shadowy outline of the Isle of 
Wight was well astern and the fresh channel 


£8 


PADRE 


breeze was blowing in my face. All up and 
down the English coast search-lights were 
sweeping the clouds above, some of them 
very close at hand, some far away and faint 
in the distance, but they were the only lights 
along the shores. Towns, cities, and vil- 
lages, as well as farm houses, were all dark; 
the lighthouses had long since been blinded ; 
ships bound in slipped by us in silence 
without the familiar red and green lights to 
port or starboard. Only the restless sweep 
of the search-lights lit and watched the path- 
ways of the sky, while along the English 
roads men went in darkness. 


CHAPTER III 


T HE train from Havre brought us into 
Paris at half past ten in the evening 
of July sixth. A Red Cross bus 
brought us through the streets to our hotel, 
where rooms had been reserved for us. So 
my first glimpse of the city was at night 
when the contrast between Paris in peace 
and Paris at war was at its height. 

To say that the streets were dark gives 
a false impression — they were black. As we 
swung into the Rue de Rome and thence 
into the Rue Caumartin we were confronted 
by a world that was “without form and void” 
except for two rows, one on either hand, of 
faint electric lights shining dimly through 
blue glass and shielded from above by metal 
screens These marked the lines of the curbs 
and the intersections of other streets, You 


00 


PADRE 


knew that there were houses on either side, 
because of heavier shadows where houses 
ought to be. From either hand came the 
occasional sound of footfalls, but at the best 
you could but dimly see those who were pass- 
ing by. From time to time a shadow would 
rush by you through the street, and the 
purring of its engine would tell you that 
other automobiles were at work. All fa- 
miliar landmarks had been blotted out. The 
Louvre was just a shadow; the Opera was 
a shadow, the Madeleine, the Arc de 
Triomphe, the Place de la Concorde, 
shadows all, and you yourself seemed to 
have lost all personality and become just 
another little shadow in a world of ghosts. 

When I reached my room I found a no- 
tice posted near the window stating that at 
night the curtains must be drawn across the 
windows and that the occupant of the room 
was responsible for this precaution. 

I was very anxious to be in Paris during 
an air raid. I did not want the city to be 


PADRE 


81 


raided on my account, nor did I wish to col- 
lect air raids or have multiplied experiences, 
but if Paris was to be raided I hoped that I 
might be on hand just once. But, although 
the city was raided just before I arrived and 
again a few days after I had left, no Boche 
tried to come over during the ten days of 
my stay. However, I think I know some- 
thing of what a raid was like. 

Some months later I spent an evening on 
the train going from Neuf chateau to Toul, 
reaching our destination at midnight. There 
were no lights on the train, not even the 
blue electric lights that were permitted in 
the S. O. S., so reading was out of the ques- 
tion and there was nothing to do but chat 
or think. 

Just before we pulled out of Neuf chateau 
four American officers climbed into my com- 
partment, lit their cigarettes, and began to 
exchange notes. In the darkness you could 
not distinguish even their outlines; only the 
glow of their cigarettes told you where they 


PADRE 


were. One officer spoke of a day when he 
had entrained with his company for Paris. 
After a ten hours’ ride the train halted 
somewhere outside the Gare d’Austerlitz. 
Night had fallen and he was asleep in his 
compartment, for they were all “dog tired,” 
when some one shook him awake and called 
him to step outside and watch an air raid 
over Paris. 

The sirens were sounding the Alerte all 
over the city. Miles away the outer batteries 
of anti-aircraft guns were sending up their 
curtains of flying steel ; then the second and 
third defensive batteries came into play ; line 
behind line of guns were taking up the task 
of driving back the Boche. Higher and 
higher the shells rose until they were burst- 
ing directly overhead. In the city itself bat- 
teries were racing through the streets like 
fire engines to take up their positions in the 
Tuilleries, the Place de la Concorde, or in 
the streets themselves, while other guns were 
hurling their shells from the city roofs. The 


PADRE 


83 


tumult was deafening. The shrieks of the 
sirens, the roar of the guns, the whistle of 
falling fragments of shells, the patter of the 
steel rain on roofs and pavements, and every 
now and then the shattering, stunning crash 
of an exploding bomb that drowned all other 
noises in its uproar, all these were inter- 
mingled with the sound of running feet and 
raucous voices, while far overhead shells 
were bursting with a beauty that dwarfed 
any carnival display of fireworks. 

And so I sat in the dark and listened as 
this man, whom I never saw and whose name 
I do not know, sketched out the most per- 
fect picture of an air raid that I had ever 
heard or read, and to which I fear I have 
done scant justice. 

One other man filled in a missing corner 
of the picture. He belonged to the Red 
Cross, a quiet man, steady and not at all 
addicted to nerves. 

All over Paris shelters had been provided 
that those who were in the streets might find 


PADRE 


34 , 

quick refuge. These shelters were marked 
by the double cross of Lorraine painted in 
red upon the street wall, with the number 
that might find accommodation within. It 
was a distinctly Parisian touch that every 
air raid brought the people of France face 
to face with the symbol of their lost prov- 
inces. 

This Red Cross man had been caught in 
the streets when the Boche came over. As 
he crossed the Place Vendome to an abri on 
the other side he “heard a roar as if a rail- 
road train was rushing from the sky above 
and was coming directly down on top of 
him.” A wave of panic swept over him, and 
he began to run — anywhere, nowhere, just 
for the sake of running. Louder and nearer 
came the roar of that “rushing train” until 
it stunned all sense and feeling. Then came 
the blast of the explosion, a shock that threw 
him to the ground, a rain of falling paving 
stones that had been thrown into the air, the 
crash of breaking glass as shattered window 


PADRE 


panes all around the square fell into the 
street. A bomb had fallen on the other side 
of the Colonne Vendome, leaving a huge 
shell hole in the pavement. 

I have heard the whistle that a little piece 
of falling shrapnel can create, and it is not 
hard to imagine what an uproar a shell the 
size of a man can make when it falls from a 
height of ten or twelve thousand feet above 
the ground. 

But if the Germans refused to bomb 
Paris for my benefit, they did shell it. I was 
lunching on the Boulevard des Italiens when 
there came that sudden “hr-r-um” that was 
so familiar to other ears, if not to mine. It 
seemed as if the shell had fallen not over a 
quarter of a mile away, but as a matter of 
fact it had exploded in the grounds of the 
Ecole Militaire, about two miles distant. 

On the train from Havre I had met and 
talked with two Englishmen, residents in 
Paris, who said that most of the shells had 
fallen in the Latin Quarter and that the 


PADRE 


other parts of Paris were practically safe. 
As I was going to a Pension near the Eiffel 
Tower, nearly two miles from the Boulevard 
St. Michel, it seemed as if I would be well 
outside the danger zone. But on July fif- 
teenth all the shells from the long range gun 
fell around the spot where I had pitched my 
tent. 

At five o’clock that afternoon I was sit- 
ting in my room writing letters when a shell 
burst suggestively near at hand. I went to 
the window just as a girl and her mother 
stepped out of a door on the opposite side 
of the way. I called down to ask where that 
shell had struck. The girl, looking up, an- 
swered that the birds were circling over the 
Ecole Militaire. Flying birds and ascend- 
ing clouds of dust always indicated the 
neighborhood of an expolded shell. So I 
put on my Sam Brown and my cap and 
went to see what damage had been wrought. 

A few minutes’ walk brought me to a 
short, narrow, ill-paved street. The Police 


PADRE 


37 


had already put up a harrier which closed 
the street, but my uniform was my passport 
and no question was raised as I passed 
through. The shell had wrecked a little 
wine-shop, blowing out the corner of the 
building with fifteen feet of the wall on, 
either side. The flooring of the second story 
had disappeared, and a closet door was 
swinging out over the abyss, swinging and 
creaking in the breeze. The flooring of the 
first story had also been utterly blown out 
and there was a gaping hole in the cellar. 
Splashes and a trail of red told where the 
bodies of two men and a woman had been 
carried to the police ambulance to be taken 
to the Morgue, and on the threshold lay the 
body of a dead rat ! 

I do not know just what damage the shells 
that fell on this day did. Two of them fell 
in the open ground around the Ecole Mili- 
taire, one fell in the fields of the Champs de 
Mars, a fourth killed a horse on one of the 
Quays near the Tour Eiffel, and this one 


38 


PADRE 


killed a rat in the wine-shop which men 
called the “Pas de Calais.” 

Of course there were some men, women, 
and children killed or injured, and some- 
times I overheard women mutter as I passed, 
“Sales betes” — “Dirty beasts.” I saw one 
man turn with flushed face and angry eyes 
to shake his fist towards the sound of the 
explosion and growl the same words, “Sales 
betes.” That was all Paris had to say. The 
crowds of shoppers on the Rue de la Paix 
and on the Grand Boulevard paid small 
heed, while men and women sat around the 
little tables of the cafes sipping their wine 
or their coffee undisturbed. 

At twenty minutes past seven that eve- 
ning we were at dinner in our pension. 
There were about fifteen, I think, around 
the table. They were mostly French offi- 
cers and their wives; women who had been 
driven from homes which they had left in 
ruins. One who sat opposite me had been 
a nurse in Gallipoli, in Serbia, and then in 


PADRE 


39 


France — she had seen the war at every 
Front. Without warning a shell burst only 
a few hundred feet away ; the building 
shook ; the glasses on the table and the open 
windows in their sashes rattled. We felt 
the jar through all our limbs. The girl next 
to me jumped a little— I doubt if any one 
saw the move, but I felt her elbow shiver 
against mine, but she had been under fire 
at Soissons. Another girl rose from the 
table and walked to the window to see if 
she could tell by the flight of birds where 
the shell had struck. A French officer was 
narrating an experience at the front. The 
sound of the explosion blotted out three or 
four words of his story, but he never went 
back to pick them up. He neither halted 
nor raised his voice. No one else at the table 
moved by so much as the quiver of an eye- 
lash. 

And this was the morale that the Germans 
were trying to destroy! 

One afternoon shortly after I arrived in 


40 


PADRE 


Paris I had three little experiences that gave 
me a glimpse into the soul of France. 

I was walking down the Rue de Rivoli 
towards the Place de la Concorde when a 
Frenchman stopped me, placed three or four 
copies of “Life” in my hands, saying “Pour 
les blesses dans votre Hopital, Monsieur.” 
I saluted and thanked him, and he walked 
quickly away. 

A few minutes later a French soldier, in 
uniform, >vas tapping his way with a cane 
down the stairs that led to the underground 
station of the Metro. He was walking with 
all the puzzled uncertainty of the newly 
blind, so I slipped my hand under his arm, 
saying, “Vous me permettez, Monsieur?” I 
asked him what train he wished to take, and 
he replied with the name of a station that I 
could not understand. I asked him to re- 
peat, which he did almost impatiently, as if 
I had been stupid, but still I could not catch 
the name, and I had to ask again. He halted 
and turned towards me. “Anglais?” he 


PADRE 


41 


asked; “Non, Americain,’’ I said. “Ah!” — 
that was all, but it meant that my stupidity 
was condoned. He asked me to read the 
names of the stations that are written above 
the platform, and I did so; when I came to 
“St. Gervaise” he stopped me. “C’est ca!” 
he said. So I put him on the train for St. 
Gervaise. As I turned away a woman in 
black said softly, “Merci, Monsieur.” 
France has adopted her mutiles, and what- 
ever ye do for the least of these ye have done 
for the whole of France. 

Late that afternoon I called on the Cure 
of the Church nearest my pension to ask for 
some educated Frenchman who could come 
to me for an hour’s conversation every eve- 
ning. The priest was expecting a call from 
a young student of the University and in- 
vited me to his rooms to meet and, if possi- 
ble, arrange with him. But we came to an 
impasse almost at the first word, for the 
man lived in the suburbs of Paris and could 
not come in the evenings, while I could not 


PADRE 


42 

see him in the afternoons. The priest cut 
the knot by inviting him to spend the nights 
with him and the evenings with me. This 
was going a long ways to he of service, and 
when I left I thanked him, saying that I 
much regretted the trouble to which I was 
placing him. He replied, “It is not possi- 
ble, Monsieur, for any American to give 
trouble to a Frenchman when we of France 
have given so much of trouble to you,” and 
then he added, “Prions Tun pour l’autre” — 1 
“Let us pray for one another.” 

Let me add one other little glimpse into 
the heart of France. 

While I was waiting for my papers and 
assignment to a hospital I was asked to go 
out to the Hospital at Auteuil to act as 
chaplain in the absence of the regular chap- 
lain, who had been called to England by 
illness. My first duty there was to conduct 
a funeral. The cemetery lay on a hillside 
with a beautiful view over Paris ; men were 
at work grading the ground and putting it 


PADRE 


43 


in condition, but it was new and, like all 
fresh-turned ground, it was rather bare. 
But I noticed that all the graves were cared 
for ; they were covered with growing flowers, 
while wreaths had been hung on the white 
crosses. 

After the ceremonies were over, the vol- 
leys had been fired, and Taps blown, I asked 
the sergeant in charge of the grounds who 
had planted these flowers on the graves. He 
told me that as soon as a burial party left 
the gates of the cemetery the French people 
living in the neighborhood came from their 
homes carrying their own plants and flowers 
in their arms, that they not only gave their 
flowers and planted them, but that they also 
came to tend and water them. These French 
peasants will not suffer the graves to re- 
main bare if any care of theirs can prevent 
it. 

I visited the Hospital at Auteuil every 
day until their own chaplain returned. 
Some of the beds were occupied by Marines 


PADRE 


44 

who had taken part in the fight at Chateau- 
Thierry, where they had carried the Ger- 
man positions and held them for five days. 
Then they were sent back to rest, but a re- 
port that the Germans were about to attack 
brought them back into the line. Here they 
were heavily shelled with shrapnel and mus- 
tard gas, and some of the wounds, especially 
the burns, seemed dreadful; one man had 
lost both his left leg and his left arm; an- 
other had the knee-cap shot away and 
eighteen machine-gun wounds besides. 

Quite a number of the wounded, includ- 
ing the Marines, belonged to the 2nd Divi- 
sion which had captured Belleau Woods. 
In the Matin of July twelfth I found an 
account of a report on the character of the 
troops of this Division which had been taken 
from the body of an officer of the German 
Intelligence Department. The report said 
that “The men of the Second Division are 
‘Shock Troops’ who fight with courage 
and dash. They only need experience and 


PADRE 


45 


training to make them very serious op- 
ponents. They belong to a class of recruits 
that should be called remarkable. They 
carry themselves well, are well built and 
wide awake. No information could be ob- 
tained from the prisoners.” I took this re- 
port with me when I went to the Hospital 
and read it to the boys; it gave a very real 
satisfaction, and they were not contented 
with one reading. The statement that “no 
information could be obtained from the 
prisoners” was especially welcomed in all 
the wards. 

“No information could be obtained from 
prisoners.” 

Do you realize all the meaning of those 
words? I did not until I sat beside a bed 
in Ward 3 at St. Nazaire and listened to a 
wounded boy as he told me of a night when 
his squad was patrolling No Man’s Land. 
They met and defeated a German patrol, 
returning with prisoners. But in the con- 
fusion and the darkness, with the star-shells 


46 


PADRE 


breaking above them and machine-guns 
pu-pu-pu-putting behind them, they did not 
notice that their sergeant was not with them. 
He had been cut off in the fight and taken 
prisoner. The next night they raided the 
German trenches in their front. The 
trenches were empty — no, not quite empty, 
for they found their sergeant there; his 
hands were bound behind his back; ropes 
had been fastened to two stakes which sup- 
ported the wicker-work of the trench; one 
was tied about his feet, while a double rope 
had been passed around the neck. These 
ropes had been drawn so taut that the body 
was held high above the ground across the 
diagonal of the traverse. Between the 
double rope a stick had been thrust which 
might be slowly twisted so as to improvise 
a most effective rack. “There is not a 
doubt,” an officer said to me, “but that they 
were trying to extort information.” 

But “No information could be obtained 
from prisoners.” Do you wonder that these 


PADRE 


47 


boys cheered, or that the word went from 

bed to bed, “They couldn’t get a d word 

out of them. Good stuff !” 

Much of my days were spent in taking 
notes for errands — mostly cigarettes, writ- 
ing paper, books, and magazines. One 
afternoon I took my sharpener for Gillette 
razor blades up with me and did a thriving 
business in all the wards. There were let- 
ters, too, to write for those who could not 
use their hands. This is one: 

“Dear 

“I am glad to write you again to let you know 
that I am getting along fine and dandy. Please ask 

how all is at home? Are Mamma and Papa 

well? Let them know that I am feeling well and 

write and let me know how is making out. 

Does he send any money or checks home like I do, 
as Mamma might be able to make use of it? Tell 
Mamma and Papa not to worry about me, but just 
be careful at home.” 

And these were the boys who stopped the 
German drive at Chateau-Thierry, cleaned 
the Huns out of Belleau Woods, swept them 


48 


PADRE 


back from the Argonne, and would have 
driven them out of Metz if they had not 
signed the armistice ! 

Two of the boys, Kelly and McArthur, 
asked if it would be possible for them to see 
the Parade on the Fourteenth of July. The 
Commanding Officer gave prompt permis- 
sion for all who were well enough to make 
the trip, and the Chief Surgeon, being con- 
sulted, said that there were not over twenty- 
five men whose condition would permit the 
effort or excitement. Having secured the 
small Hospital camion, I went to Red Cross 
headquarters and commandeered one of 
their larger camions which gave us seats and 
to spare. And then, at the last moment, 
when the motors were at the door, clothing 
for Kelly and McArthur could not be 
found! It was a keen disappointment, and 
I hated to break the news; however, they 
took it without a whimper or a groan. It 
seemed as if they were trying to cheer me, 
instead of my trying to cheer them. 


PADRE 


49 


Wounds of the flesh or wounds of the spirit, 
these boys bore them all with a wonderful 
courage. 

After seeing the hoys off I took the 
Metro and went down to see the parade 
myself. The day was cloudy, with a fine, 
drizzling rain falling all over Paris. I asked 
a captain of the French army, who was 
afield with his thirteen-year-old son, where 
we could see the parade best, and he off ered 
to show me what he thought the most ad- 
vantageous spot, but as we were early we 
stopped at a small cafe for a cup of coffee. 

From the cafe we walked up to the Ave- 
nue of the Grande Armee, which was al- 
ready crowded, but I rented three chairs 
and we placed them near the corner of the 
street where the parade turned off so as to 
avoid the Arc de Triomphe, for only a vic- 
torious army may pass through that arch. 

My chair developed defects. One of the 
rounds that held the legs together was 
broken, and when I stood upon it it threat- 


50 


PADRE 


ened momentary collapse. As the Ameri- 
cans were passing by an enthusiastic Royal- 
ist sprang up beside me with cheers for the 
King. Whether it was her politics or her 
weight I do not know, but the chair simply 
spread its legs and lay down, whereupon we 
hurriedly, and I faintly trust gracefully, 
descended somehow to the ground. 

I have seen other parades in Paris, when 
the infantry went by splendid with their red, 
when the street was brilliant with the black 
and gold of the artillery, the blue and white 
of the Hussars, the blue touched with black 
of the cavalry, the scarlet of the Spahis, the 
officers with their plumes, aigrettes, and 
shining casques, all making up a mass of 
vivid coloring. But how different were the 
armies of this July! Khaki, dim blue, neu- 
tral shades that merged into the background, 
made to conceal and not to show, but they 
were the more impressive, for these men had 
only just arrived from the battlefield, and 
they were keeping the gates for France. 


PADRE 


51 


That very night they entrained again and 
were sent back to the line, and a few days 
later we received at St. Nazaire wounded 
boys whom I had seen marching in this 
parade. 

It was literally a Review of the Nations. 
First came the mounted escort, with crested 
helmets and black horsehair plumes; cadets 
from Fontainebleau and St. Cyr; Americans 
who had fought at Cantigny; English, 
Scotch in their kilts, Irish, and Welsh; the 
Australians, with red ribbons on their hats; 
then the Belgians, and following them a 
French regiment which had distinguished 
itself at the Yser and bore that name upon 
its flag. Next came the Greeks and then 
the Italians, with a detachment carrying 
their heavy machine guns on their shoulders ; 
the Poles, and the Portuguese with their red 
and green flag; Czecho- Slovaks singing 
their national air; French Marines; Mon- 
tenegrins; Serbians; Moroccans; Senega- 
lese; more French, and more French still. 


52 


PADRE 


And as they swung by, detachment after 
detachment, horse, infantry, and guns, the 
crowd cheered, calling them all by name, 
“Voila les Anglais — les Ecossais — les Amer- 
icains.” Some of the flags bore the names 
of battles, “Verdun, Ft. Duaumont, Vaux,” 
while a few carried the rare and valued dec- 
orations bestowed by France upon the regi- 
ment “for valor.” 

Girls and men covered the marching ranks 
with flowers, until the flower vendors stood 
with empty hands. But I noticed this with 
interest. Alone among them all, the Ameri- 
cans and the English marched with their 
eyes front and never turned their heads. 
While other regiments smiled and answered 
jest for jest, our boys passed as if uncon- 
scious of the cheering crowds, and we all felt, 
as I heard one officer say, “Just look at those 
boys! Aren’t they fine? It’s great to see 
them over here.” 

The great parade was over. Later in the 
day I saw the broken fragments of the 


PADRE 


armies marching through the Tuilleries or 
down the Rue de Rivoli on the way to en- 
train again for the front. Only trampled 
flowers in the streets remained to remind 
you of these who had passed by. 

But from Montmartre that evening, after 
the sun had set and the city lay defended by 
its utter darkness, you might watch that 
which appeared like flashes of summer light- 
ning in the eastern sky, but which was not 
summer lightning. And early the next 
morning, when Paris was very still, you 
could hear faintly the drumming of the guns, 
barely forty miles away. The pomp had 
vanished, but the guns remained, for, along 
the sixty miles from Chateau-Thierry to the 
Argonne, Ludendorf was launching his last 
off ensive. 


CHAPTER IV 


O N the sixteenth I received my assign- 
ment to Base Hospital 101, at St. 
Nazaire, so I said good-by to the 
boys at Auteuil, secured my papers and 
reservations on the train, packed up, and 
made ready to leave Paris. 

A ten hours’ ride on a hot day in a packed 
and crowded train brought us very willingly 
to St. Nazaire. From time to time we 
passed gangs of German prisoners, working 
under guard. Twice we passed a troop- 
train packed with our own American boys, 
who leaned far out of doors and windows to 
make sure that no word of their thunderous 
greeting escaped our ears. From Nantes 
westward we saw continuous evidences of 
the American occupation. Here they were 
working on that railroad which was to run 
54 


PADRE 


55 


all the way from St. Nazaire through to the 
Vosges mountains, and nearer the sea we 
passed huge warehouses that were covering 
enormous areas of ground. 

Later, in the wards, I spoke of these and 
of the great gun-factory that the United 
States was building in France. 

I told the boys of the wooden city that 
Ferdinand and Isabella had erected for the 
billetting of the troops that were besieging 
Grenada and of that windy, blustery night 
when a curtain in the queen’s tent, driven by 
the gale into a lighted taper, hurst into 
flame. Fanned by the wind, the conflagra- 
tion spread through all the camp, and so the 
morning broke, gray and cold, on a city of 
burning embers and smoldering desolation. 
The Moors in Grenada took fresh courage; 
their cheers and shouts of mockery rang 
from their walls. Surely now the army must 
fade away and the great enterprise be aban- 
doned. But a few days later quantities of 
stone began to appear on the vega around 


56 PADRE 

Grenada. Nine cities had undertaken the 
task of rebuilding the city in stone instead 
of wood. “It verily seemed as if some 
miracle operated to aid this pious work, so 
rapidly did arise a formidable city with solid 
edifices, powerful walls, and mighty towers, 
where lately had been seen nothing but tents 
and light pavilions.” Nothing, I told the 
boys, had broken the Moorish spirit, im- 
paired the morale of the defenders, and 
weakened their powers of resistance as the 
sight of this stone city rising so swiftly be- 
fore their eyes, for it meant that this was no 
light undertaking. Behind the siege was 
the determination of a great will and the 
weight of a settled purpose. That stone 
city meant that the Spaniards never would 
come back “until it was over over there” in 
1492. So, I said, if I were the Kaiser it 
would not be the actual number of Ameri- 
can regiments and divisions lined up on the 
Western Front that would bother me o’ 
nights. It would be these miles of railroad 


PADRE 


57 


lines, these acres upon acres of warehouses, 
these huge factories and repair shops that 
we were putting up, for they, too, spoke of 
a settled determination and a resolved will 
that we, in 1918, are here to stay and we, ( 
too, 4 ‘will not go back until it is over, over 
here.” 

When the train pulled into St. Nazaire 
I was met by Mr. Washburn, the chaplain 
whom I was to relieve, and together we went 
through a few of the shacks and then to mess. 
Mr. Washburn left that evening, and I went 
through the other wards until I had visited 
them all — at least, all that I could find, 
but for the next two or three days I kept on 
discovering others that had been tucked 
away out of sight, and it was over a week 
before I found the Nurses’ Ward. 

St. Nazaire is a city with a population of 
about 38,000, lying at the mouth of the river 
Loire, on the Atlantic coast of France, and 
half way between Brest and La Rochelle. 
It is practically a new city, conceived and 


58 


PADRE 


born since the Revolution. There is noth- 
ing to tempt the tourist, neither historic as- 
sociations, architecture, nor scenery. The 
only event in the long history of F ranee that 
Baedeker can find to record is that “The 
Young Pretender set sail from St. Nazaire 
in a frigate provided by Mr. Walsh of 
Nantes in 1745.” 

Yet throughout every month of the sum- 
mer and fall of 1918 tourists were arriving, 
both from the west and from the east, in 
numbers that far exceeded the population 
of the city. Those from the west came by 
boat and marched through the city streets. 
Those from the east came in hospital trains 
and were carried through the streets in am- 
bulances. 

Base Hospital 101 lay on the edge of the 
city, where it occupied several acres of well 
wooded ground, with many handsome trees, 
on both sides of the Rue de la Paix, running 
back to the Rue Ville-es-Martin, with an en- 
trance on both streets. 


PADRE 


59 


The original, and main, building was a 
huge three-storied structure which had been 
a “college” before the war. It was shaped 
like a letter “H,” the two parallels being 
about 250 feet long, while the cross-bar was 
perhaps 200 feet in length. Here were the 
offices of the organization, the operating 
rooms, several wide glass-enclosed corridors, 
and about a dozen wards, both surgical and 
medical. 

Scattered among the trees or across the 
Rue de la Paix were the long shacks that 
had been erected to accommodate the ever- 
increasing number of patients, until we had 
eighteen such wards and a hospital of fifteen 
hundred beds. 

We were fortunate in this, that with only 
one exception all our wards had windows on 
both sides, so that, when pneumonia cases 
came to us and especially when we became 
a hospital purely for this disease, we could 
give our patients plenty of fresh air, which 
is the most effective medicine. In addition 


60 


PADRE 


there were shacks for the officers and nurses, 
mess halls for the Staff, patients, and per- 
sonnel, and more shacks for the stores and 
supplies. 

The Red Cross had provided five build- 
ings for the use of the patients and person- 
nel; three of these were under one roof. 

First in order came the Nurses’ Rest 
Room, about twenty-five feet square, with 
a piano, victrola, rugs, tables, and very com- 
fortable chairs. Our Sunday services were 
held here until the congregation outgrew 
the room and we had to move over to the 
adjoining Hut. Some of the pleasantest 
and most restful minutes of the day were 
spent within these walls, for every afternoon 
from three o’clock until five Miss Gordon 
of the Y. W. C. A. or, in her rare absence, 
one of the nurses served afternoon tea. 
When you came tired from the strain of the 
operating room, or from a ward where per- 
haps you had just felt the strength go out 
from a dying hand; when you came back 


PADRE 


61 


from the long walk, often through rain and 
mud, from the cemetery with the echo of 
Taps still wailing in your ears, it was good 
to sit down for a few minutes in this cheery 
room. It might be the only twenty minutes 
in the day when you would be off your feet, 
and the rest gave you fresh courage for your 
task. 

Miss Gordon made this room a little bit 
of home for every one of us, and I am glad 
to have this opportunity to recognize the 
value, not only of all she did, but of her 
mere presence there. 

The second Red Cross building was the 
Hut, with its canteen, auditorium, and 
stage. During my chaplaincy the Rev. Mr. 
Dana of the Y. M. C. A. was in charge of 
the building, the entertainments, and the 
canteen. He also ran the stove and ac- 
quired quite a knack in carpentry. Tact- 
ful, always ready to cooperate, prompt for 
any service and willing to go to any amount 


62 


PADRE 


of trouble, he represented his organization 
at its best. 

Several nights each week the Red Cross 
supplied movies for the Hut and sent down 
an operator from Paris. We saw many 
comedies and dramas and the Weekly Illus- 
trated Pictorial Review. We saw pictures 
of the building, christening, and launching 
of ships in America, troops training in our 
cantonments; we saw pictures of our big 
naval guns in action, the Parade of the Na- 
tions in Paris on Bastile Day; in short we 
saw everything except what we most wanted 
to see. We wanted to see a picture of the 
Bootblack Stand under the Brooklyn 
Bridge; Broadway where it crosses 14th 
Street; Herald Square; Ferries on the Hud- 
son; the Statue of Liberty — most of all we 
wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. And 
they showed us troops marching and nava^ 
guns in action! 

I remember one night when the hero of 
the photo-drama landed from his steamer, 


PADRE 


63 


and we saw him getting into a taxi at the 
23rd Street docks. We caught a glimpse 
of West Street and saw the blessed New 
York pavement with happy souls dodging 
traffic in the streets. We all sat up straight 
in our chairs and said, “Now we shall see 
Madison Square, the Flatiron Building, 
and the crowds going down the subway en- 
trances.” 

But nothing of the sort — that slice of 
bread and jam was snatched from our lips; 
instead we were shown the interior of a New 
York house with all its windows curtained! 
“Can you beat it?” 

The third Bed Cross room was a club- 
room for the personnel of the Hospital. 
Mr. Dana had helped the boys organize the 
One-O-One Club and the Bed Cross sup- 
plied the room, which was about twenty-five 
feet square and well furnished with a piano, 
chairs, tables, books, and games. 

A little distance to the north lay the Bed 
Cross Office, library, and storeroom. At all 


64 


PADRE 


hours of the day hoys from the wards were 
dropping in here for supplies of one kind or 
another, tennis rackets and balls, for we had 
two tennis courts, one in operation and the 
other building, or simply for a chat. 

From this storeroom we sent half a dozen 
victrolas into the wards, but the boys must 
have thought that they had been “made in 
Germany,” for one after another came limp- 
ing back, either completely silenced or with 
a voice that was between a squeak and a 
squawk. Their exteriors justified the as- 
sumption that they had passed through a 
heavy barrage. 

We also issued half a dozen pairs of hair 
clippers to the wards. These drifted in, one 
by one, with from a fourth to a third of their 
teeth missing. I do not know whether they 
had been used to cut hair or draw nails, but 
they must have drawn some language from 
the last boy who came under their operation 
closely akin to that of the famous army 


PADRE 


65 


which once “fought and swore terribly in 
Flanders.” 

Here, when the day’s work was done and 
the last round of the wards had been made, 
we gathered for an hour of very pleasant 
fellowship. There might be a box of choco- 
lates somewhere around the Office, which 
meant a lot more in France than it does in 
America. Or in the fall, after the stove had 
been drafted into service, there would be 
chestnuts to roast on top of the stove while 
we talked over the day’s work and laid plans 
for the morrow. 

We were very fortunate in all our person-* 
nel. Captain Barge, and after his transfer 
to Bordeaux, Captain McGrew, as Hospital 
Representatives, were efficient and depend- 
able; Miss White^ Miss Gordon and Mrs. 
De Forest, and Miss Vauclain — who joined 
us just before my transfer to the Front — 
were constantly among the patients, writing 
letters, distributing supplies, and perform- 
ing countless services. During the epidemic 


66 


PADRE 


they went into the wards to help the nurses, 
not without a very real element of risk. The 
members of all three organizations, Red 
Cross, Y. M. C. A., and Y. W. C. A., 
worked together with the finest kind of co- 
operation. They were unwearied in their 
labors, devoted in their service, and won the 
respect of the Staff and thfc confidence of 
the patients. 

The story of the founding of the Hospital 
at St. Nazaire, of its beginnings and its early 
days, has a rather peculiar interest and some 
rather dramatic features. 

In June, 1917, the first convoy from 
America reached this harbor, bringing 
troops and also the Johns Hopkins Hos- 
pital Unit. On the voyage over there was 
much sickness among the troops; some had 
been injured in accidents of one kind or an- 
other, and even after reaching shore new 
cases of illness or of injury occurred, until 
there were about two hundred and fifty men 


PADRE 67 

in urgent need of hospital care and treat- 
ment. 

There was a large stone building on the 
outskirts of the city, which had been for- 
merly a school for boys. The French had 
turned this into a small hospital, with a 
staff of two doctors, three nurses and about 
a dozen Chinese coolies, who acted as order- 
lies. The place was unclean, overrun with 
vermin, and alive with flies, but it was the 
only hospital available, and the sick from 
the convoy were brought here. No attempt 
was made to classify the patients; medical 
and surgical cases, those suffering from 
meningitis, grippe, mumps, or measles were 
all placed in the same ward, side* by side, 
and intermingled with the surgical cases. 
There was only one tiny kitchen, half under- 
ground, well populated with flies and other 
nuisances — both flying and crawling; it was 
dark, foul, and much too small under any 
circumstances to permit the proper feeding 
of several hundred patients. 


68 PADRE 

Five doctors and fifteen men were de- 
tailed from the Johns Hopkins Unit to take 
charge of this Hospital and organize it. 
They moved in promptly and thereafter 
were up each day at six o’clock; when they 
were not operating they were scrubbing 
floors. Within two or three days they had 
made the place habitable, and some of the 
nurses attached to the Unit were sent down 
from Savanay, where the rest of the Unit 
was quartered, to help in the work and care 
for the sick. 

At this time an Army Field Hospital, 
with seven doctors and eighty-five men, was 
already located within the school grounds, 
and it is not quite clear why some of this 
work should not have been assumed by 
them. One wonders why, at least, the 
scrubbing of floors might not have been as- 
signed to the enlisted men attached to this 
organization, but these five doctors, with 
their nurses and orderlies, worked on alone 


PADRE 


69 


until the wards were cleaned and the pa- 
tients properly housed and cared for. 

Eighteen hours after they had taken 
charge a message came from one of our 
cruisers in the harbor, asking the Hospital 
to receive an acute mastoid case. The pa- 
tient was in a serious condition and needed 
an immediate operation. The doctors con- 
sulted and sent back word that any opera- 
tion that evening would be impossible ; they 
had neither sterile dressings nor adequate in- 
struments, and the operating room was not 
yet in condition for use. They said they 
would work all night and be ready to operate 
early the next morning, if the patient could 
be kept alive. Word came back that they 
would do what they could for the patient, 
“But for God's sake, hurry!" 

Early the next morning they telephoned 
to Savanay asking that the aural surgeon 
connected with their Unit should be sent 
down with the proper instruments for a 
mastoid operation. The answer was that 


70 


PADRE 


“an order must first be secured from the 
Surgeon-General at Army Headquarters.” 

Of course, by the time such an order could 
be secured the patient would need a chap- 
lain, not a surgeon. 

However, one of the Staff had seen this 
operation performed several times, and had 
himself performed it once, so, taking what 
instruments they had, they opened up the 
mastoid cells, evacuated the pus, did the best 
they could — and the man recovered nicely. 

A few days later another patient was 
brought in with an eye to be enucleated. 
There was a specialist in diseases of the eye 
attached to the Unit, but he also was at 
Savanay, and a telephone brought once more 
the same response, “Get an order from the 
Surgeon-General.” However, another of 
the Staff had seen this operation repeatedly 
and had performed it once, so he operated — 
and again with complete success. 

This detail from the Johns Hopkins Unit 
administered the Hospital from July sixth, 


PADRE 


71 


when they took it over from the French, 
until the first week in the following Septem- 
ber. Then a group of Casual medical offi- 
cers and some enlisted men were assigned 
here, thus releasing the members of this 
Unit, now increased to ten doctors, thirty- 
five nurses, and sixty-five enlisted men, and 
they rejoined the rest of the organization at 
their permanent station in the Toul sector. 

In this way the Hospital at St. Nazaire 
had its first beginnings. It seemed to me, 
as I heard the story from one of the found- 
ers, to be a splendid record of courage, 
spirit, and clean grit in the face of most dis- 
couraging conditions. I am glad to be able 
to add that, despite the intermingling of in- 
fectious and non-inf ectious cases before 
these men took hold, the death rate was very 
low. 


CHAPTER V 


I CAME to St. Nazaire with very little 
experience, but with two good resolu- 
tions : 

First, to see my own son in every bed ; to 
try to do for him what I would wish a chap- 
lain to do for my own boy were I compelled 
to be three thousand miles away. 

Second, to realize whenever I went to a 
bedside that somewhere in America there 
was a father and a mother who would gladly 
give all they possessed for my opportunity 
of standing beside that particular bed; that, 
I was the representative, not only of the Red 
Cross, but also of those fathers and mothers 
who could not come to France, but whose 
boys were here. 

Another resolution formed itself at the 
end of the first week. 

72 


PADRE 


73 


Third, if you want to keep in sight of your 
job, don’t ever sit down until you go to bed. 
At the best it will always be three jumps 
ahead of you, and you must hustle to keep 
on the same side of the horizon line. 

There are thirty-five doctors in a hospital, 
seventy nurses, and two hundred and fifty 
in the personnel, but there is only one chap- 
lain. When he sits down that side of the 
hospital work stops. There is no one to take 
his place. 

But I soon discovered another quality in 
the chaplain’s work that differentiates it. 
The title suggests an office whose incumbent 
conducts religious services, buries the dead, 
and ministers to the sick and dying. As a 
matter of practice it is hardly possible to 
define his functions. The surgeon has a 
clearly demarked task; so have the physician 
and the nurse. But the chaplain is literally 
the “cook and the mate and the midship- 
mite and the crew of the captain’s gig.” His 
function is to do anything and everything 


74 


PADRE 


that no one else has the time to do, in addi- 
tion to his expected tasks. 

The day after I arrived I was told that at 
the regular Noon Officers’ Meeting I had 
been unanimously elected Censor. This 
meant that I was responsible for the censor- 
ship of letters, the receiving and forwarding 
of mails, and the interpretation of all cen- 
sorship rules. 

Fortunately the appointment involved 
only the oversight of the work and the as- 
sumption of responsibility. The letters 
were censored by convalescents in the Offi- 
cers’ Wards, although there were some that 
came to me each day, and the actual handling 
of the mails was attended to by a Mail Clerk 
detailed for the purpose. 

But it was work, nevertheless. Each 
morning I found a large basket filled with 
mail waiting for me near Ward 10. I di- 
vided the letters up into packages and then 
started to distribute them among the beds. 

I have said elsewhere that I rarely heard 


PADRE 


75 


a groan or a cry of pain escape the lips of a 
patient in the wards. That statement must 
be modified. When I made my first visit 
each morning in the Officers’ Ward, with 
bundles of uncensored mail piled high in my 
arms, I was greeted with a moan from the 
first bed, and then the whole ward became 
eloquent with more or less profane adjura- 
tions. Here and there, as I passed down the 
aisle emptying my arms, this patient or that 
would assure me, quite cheerfully, that he 
was not so well this morning and would be 
quite unable to censor mail. A relapse, a 
set-back, a rise in temperature brought com- 
pensations of their own. 

In the afternoon these drafted censors 
would hand me back from ten to fifty letters 
whose authors had violated the regulations. 
I took these rejected letters over to the Re- 
ceiving Office, found the location of the 
writer from the Card Index, and wrote his 
name and ward on the back of the envelope. 
Then I either took them back for correction, 


76 


PADRE 


or sent them around by the hands of my 
assistant. Eventually I had boxes placed in 
each ward, told the patient to use these in- 
stead of the boxes in the Hospital Post- 
office, instructed the wardmasters to inspect 
all mail from their wards, make sure that 
the envelopes at least complied with the 
regulations, and then put the letters in the 
box for uncensored mail. 

I was also told that I was responsible for 
the burial of the dead. For any service in 
addition to these two assignments the au- 
thorities would be duly grateful, but the 
Chaplain’s official duties were the super- 
vision of the Hospital mail and the burial 
of the dead. 

The first week was a “hodge-podge!” 
Each day I began a dozen things that I 
could not finish; before one task could be 
put through others would crowd in. I had 
the uncomfortable feeling that I was ac- 
complishing nothing, that I was working 
hard and making no headway. It took me 


PADRE 


77 


the best part of a week to discover the rea- 
son. I had been trying to deal with each 
bed in every ward, to visit daily with each 
patient. But with from eight hundred to 
thirteen hundred boys in the Hospital this 
was a manifest impossibility. Spending 
only five minutes at each bed I could make 
twelve visits in an hour; between sunrise 
and sunset I might perhaps reach as many 
as one hundred and twenty boys. But in 
addition there were trips to be made down 
town, cables to be dispatched, money orders 
to be sent or cashed, purchases made at the 
Commissary, letters written, funerals con- 
ducted ; there was the work in the operating 
room, and a score of things beside. 

I made up my mind that I would be of 
greater service if I could do something for 
the Ward as a whole, rather than try to deal 
with individual patients, except in those 
cases where the boys were seriously ill or 
needed some personal or spiritual attention. 


78 


PADRE 


Now let me try to take you through a 
day’s work. 

We breakfasted at half past seven; im- 
mediately thereafter I either went or sent 
down town for a copy of the Phare , a 
French paper published in Nantes. This 
gave me the news from the Front ten hours 
before the English papers arrived from 
Paris. Indeed, there were several weeks 
when the English papers did not reach us 
until twenty-four hours after publication. 

Many of the boys in the wards had just 
come from the Front; they had been 
wounded at Chateau- Thierry or Belleau 
Woods and were exceedingly anxious for 
word of their regiments or of their divisions. 
But whether they came from the advanced 
zone or from the S. O. S. they were all alike 
in their keen eagerness to know what the 
English, the French and, above all, what the 
Americans were doing. 

When I reached St. Nazaire Foch was 
just beginning that marvelous series of 


PADRE 


79 


drives that was to end only when Germany 
yielded and the Kaiser fled. From July to 
November he flailed the German lines as 
Briareus with his hundred arms might have 
struck had he been a boxer. Now here, now 
there the blows fell all along the line, from 
the Channel to St. Mihiel, while the be- 
wildered Ludendorf rushed his tired reserves 
from point to point, only to find the blow 
falling where the reserves were not. All the 
news was good and of exceeding interest. 

So, heralded by the cry “Here comes the 
news — attention, everybody !” I took the 
Phare daily into every ward. The convales- 
cents who were sitting outside came crowd- 
ing in behind me, some on crutches, some 
with canes, others in wheeled chairs or lean- 
ing on a friendly shoulder; those who were 
still confined to their beds sat up, if they 
were able. Standing in the center of the 
ward I translated the communiques from 
the various Fronts, Belgian, English, 
French, American, and Italian, with what- 


80 


PADRE 


ever else of interest the paper might contain. 
Then would come questions and answers, 
and perhaps a little discussion of the mili- 
tary situation. As I passed down the aisle 
one bed after another would call out, 
“Thank you, Padre.” As long as I was with 
the Hospital they never failed to thank me. 
But before I left the ward I went to the 
nurse for a list of those who were seriously ill 
and stopped by the bedsides of these for a 
little talk and a brief prayer. 

I also read the bulletins in the Patients’ 
Mess Hall at noon, and at the Officers’ Mess. 
The news in the evening papers I could read 
n the Hut, when both patients and personnel 
were gathered for the “movies.” If it was 
really important I made a hurried trip 
through all the wards. One evening I met 
Major Thatcher in one of the shacks across 
the road giving a saline solution to a patient 
who was desperately ill. He told me that a 
bulletin was posted down town stating that 
the long expected American offensive in the 


PADRE 


81 


St. Mihiel sector was under way. Although 
it was nearly nine o’clock and I had barely 
an hour before Taps, I started on the round 
of the twenty-nine wards, including in my 
itinerary the Nurses’ Rest Room and the 
One-O-One Club. Taps had just sounded 
when I reached the last of the wards, so I 
gave my news here in the dark. 

To enable the boys to follow the course of 
the military operations the Red Cross posted 
large maps of the Western Front in most 
of the wards, while in the Officers’ Mess we 
also had maps of the Eastern Front and of 
Palestine. 

We also had occasional talks on current 
topics. Fortunately I had traveled over 
much of the territory, both east and west, 
where armies were now fighting. I had been 
through the Sinai Desert, over the route of 
Allenby’s army west of the Jordan, and over 
that of the King of Hedjaz from Ma’an to 
Damascus. I had been through the Balkan 
States from Constantinople to Budapest; 


PADRE 


82 

I had visited Italy several times and had 
motored along the Western Front only a 
few years before the war, while for the past 
two years I had been on the platform in 
America, speaking on the issues of the war 
and answering questions. In these ways I 
had gathered a mass of material for discus- 
sion with the boys that helped somewhat to 
break the monotony of the long days. 

Sometimes we dipped into history; I told 
them of the disintegration of Germany in the 
long wars with the papacy in the Twelfth 
and Thirteenth Centuries ; of the integration 
and centralization of the nation under Bis- 
marck; of the wars of 1862, ’66, and ’70. 
We traced the steps leading up to the pres- 
ent war, and discussed the trend of recent 
political thought across the Rhine. 

Again we turned from history to follow 
the armies in the field. When the Arabs cap- 
tured Ma’an, I told the wards of the ancient 
rock-cut city of Petra; when Madaba fell, 
we discussed together its famous mosaic 


PADRE 


map ; when the Turks were beaten at Edrie, 
we visited the underground city there, its 
subterranean rooms and passages. 

As Allenby moved northward through 
Palestine, we considered the geologic forma- 
tion of the country, the advantages and dis- 
advantages of certain routes, and followed 
armies that long since were “pulvis et cineres, 
et praeterea nihil” along the ancient roads. 

One day I took a poem into the wards; 
it had its inspiration in a photograph, taken 
from a prisoner, showing German soldiers 
removing the bells from a church in a French 
village for recasting into cannon. 


The Bells* 

“They have taken your bells. Oh God — 

The bells that hung in your towers, 

That cried your grace in a lovely song 
And counted the praying hours. 

“They have taken your bells — your bells 
That the people loved and knew, 

♦By Louise Driscoll in The New York Times. Used by permission of 
Author and Publishers. 


PADRE 


84 


That rang the hours of the day 
And counted the long night through. 

“And the little birds flew away; 

They could no longer sing 
In towers like tongueless men 
That were slaves of a tyrant king. 

“The little birds flew away! 

They will tell the clouds and the wind. 
Till the uttermost places know 
The sin that the Hun has sinned/’ 


I told the wards of the old New England 
custom, inherited from England, of tolling 
the church bells for the dying, once for a 
man and twice for a woman, and then, after 
a pause, one stroke for each year of the age. 
So, if in the early hours of the morning you 
heard the bell toll once, and then begin again 
until you counted sixty-three slow strokes 
of the clapper, you knew that old Jim Rob- 
inson on the North Road was gone at last. 

Hundreds of years ago the world believed 
that the devils, who always gathered around 
the bedside of the dying, could not endure 


PADRE 


85 


the sound of consecrated bells, wherefore the 
bells were tolled to drive them far away. A 
small fee paid to the sexton would secure 
a more furious tolling of the bells, which, of 
course, would give the passing soul a longer 
start on its race for Paradise. When the 
Germans took the bells from the church tow- 
ers of Belgium and Flanders there was noth- 
ing left to drive the devils out, so they all 
moved in and settled down in their lines, 
which accounted for much of recent German 
history. 

Another thing we were able to do for the 
wards through the cooperation of the 
Y. M. C. A. Once or twice a week we were 
able to get concert troupes, visiting St. Na- 
zaire to entertain in the huts of the various 
encampments, to come up and sing through 
the wards. I wish I could make you under- 
stand how much this meant and what good 
medicine it was. 

My Church in Nyack had given me a small 
collapsible organ of five octaves. This was 


86 


PADRE 


carried around from ward to ward, and 
headed a procession, for every boy that could 
walk, hobble, or roll, some on crutches and 
some on canes, others in wheeled chairs, fol- 
lowed the entertainers in their rounds. They 
filled the ward while others looked in at the 
windows or crowded around the doors. 

The Herron Sisters were especially eff ec- 
tive, for they not only gave their best to the 
boys and came again and again until they 
had sung or recited in every ward, but they 
also went around and visited with them, go- 
ing from bed to bed. Now and then they 
were recognized by boys who had heard them 
elsewhere in the States or in other camps of 
France. They met old friends or made new 
ones every time they came. 

I remember very vividly the day when the 
author of “Madelon” came to us to sing and 
act out his song until the walls rang with un- 
accustomed laughter. 

Sometimes I read aloud the stories of W. 
W. Jacobs, from “Sherlock Holmes” or 


PADRE 


87 


“Action Front.” A story in the July At- 
lantic , “The Subjugation of William the 
Kaiser,” gave much pleasure, and there 
were some hair-raising tales of “Arsene Lu- 
pin” which I could only find in French and 
had to translate into English as I went along. 

We had a very plucky and cheerful red- 
headed marine who had been wounded in 
both arms and legs at Chateau-Thierry. He 
could not hold a book, so I read “Penrod” 
to him and his ward every day until his ward- 
master invented a desk that he could put 
across his lap to hold a book whose leaves he 
was able to turn. Later he developed pneu- 
monia, which he met and conquered with the 
same grinning cheerfulness that he always 
showed. 

And there were other needs to be met. 
These boys who could not leave their beds 
needed things from the Commissary, the Red 
Cross, or from the stores in St. Nazaire. 
One boy, whom I had seen marching in Paris 
on Bastile Day, was paralyzed from the 


88 


PADRE 


waist down by a machine gun bullet ; he had 
a great craving for fruit. The Red Cross 
saw to it that he was supplied with melons, 
grapes, or peaches. But once he received 
his melon from another source. I was com- 
ing up the Boulevard de l’Ocean one day 
when an officer joined me and handed me 
seven and a half francs which he had confis- 
cated from some of his colored troops. They 
had been “shooting craps/’ which is forbid- 
den — and they kept on “shooting” a little bit 
too long. “I usually try to look the other 
way,” he said, “but these fellows went right 
on with their ‘crap’ game and never stopped 
when I came up. I could not let them put 
that over on me, so I confiscated their 
‘bones’ and took the pot. I am turning it 
over to you to use for the boys in the Hos- 
pital.” That “crap” game produced an- 
other melon for the patient in Ward 14. 

We got him into a wheeled chair at last, 
and then one day we said good-by to him; 


PADRE 


89 


the ambulance took him to the docks, where 
he was carried on board a transport and 
sailed for home. 

This boy wants a check cashed, another 
wants razor blades — but let me quote from 
my note book for one day : 

“Tony P. wants to know the cost of a telegram 
to Italy; find out. B, in Ward 20, has a testament 
with a bullet through it which he wishes to send 
home; get him another testament and do his up for 
mailing. R. M. J.’s brother is an ensign on U. S. 
Transport ; he wants to know when this trans- 
port will arrive at Brest or Bordeaux and how he 
can telegraph his brother and ask him to call; ask 
at office of the Officer of the Port. B. J. has some 
papers in the possession of M. M. is a "walking 
patient" in this hospital; find his ward and tell him 
to look B. J. up. Five boys want me to write home 
for them, as their writing arms are injured. 

“E. wants cigarettes, as do others in that ward. 

“Tooth brushes wanted in Ward 18.” 

Then comes a list of seven cables to be 
sent home. For some of these I pay, for 
many of these boys are far in arrears in 
their pay and have no money. Three money 


90 PADRE 

orders are to be collected, and one is to be 
sent home. 

“S., in Ward 5, wants me to buy for him a safety 
razor, brush, and soap. 

“G. R. (colored) has been separated from his wife 
for seven years and has no children. He made an 
allotment in her favor and wants it stopped. 

“Report death and burial of E. D. to Graves Reg- 
istration Service, Adj. Gen. Office, and Base Chap- 
lain. 

“G., operated on yesterday, spent eleven days be- 
tween the lines, wounded; get his story. He wants 
to tell it. I had to stop him to-day, as he was in 
no condition to make the effort to tell it. 

“The Catholics want to have mess hours arranged 
so that they can get breakfast after Mass. See 
Mess Sergeant about this. 

“E. wants $10 American money changed into 
French money. 

“P. wants a crystal put in his watch. 

“Writing paper wanted in Ward 28; reading mat- 
ter for A. and B. in Wards 27 and 17.” 

That covers the notes in my book for one 
day. When I had an assistant I turned 
much of this work over to him. He had his 
own note book, and went through the wards 


PADRE 


91 


every day, jotting down errands and com- 
missions. If a boy had money, purchases 
were made for him at his own expense; if he 
was “strapped” his needs were supplied by 
the Red Cross either from its own stores, or 
by purchases from the Army Commissary or 
the stores in the city. Sometimes a boy 
reached us who had been burned by mus- 
tard gas, stripped of all his clothes on the 
battlefield, and wrapped in a blanket. He 
would have to be equipped from the ground 
up and could pay for nothing. Every such 
case was thoroughly provided for by the 
Red Cross. 


CHAPTER VI 


F ROM time to time we received word 
to expect a hospital train that was 
bringing wounded from the Front. 
This meant a busy twenty-four hours evacu- 
ating patients to Savanay or elsewhere and 
getting every ward and bed ready for those 
who were on the way. 

One evening we had early dinner, as a 
hospital train was expected a little after 
six o’clock. Eighteen ambulances were lined 
up in the Rue de la Paix, with their stretch- 
ers in position and their crews at hand. We 
had been evacuating all day and the nurses 
had their wards in perfect order, with all 
floors scrubbed and all beds freshly paade. 
The patients who had remained with us were 
keenly interested, for, who knows, the man 
about to be placed in the empty bed to their 

92 


PADKE 


right or left might come from their own sec- 
tor of the line, from their division, perhaps 
from their own regiment, and possibly from 
their company. 

It was quite clear that there would be no 
sleep that night until the hospital train 
came in, and it did not reach the depot until 
after midnight! At eleven the ambulances 
went off with a rush. Then came a long de- 
lay. About a dozen of us had gathered in a 
room in the Officers’ Shack; some were play- 
ing bridge; others watched or read; the air 
was blue with smoke, when an orderly 
knocked at the door and reported, “The am- 
bulances have left the depot, sir.” 

The arrival of a hospital train is some- 
thing to be remembered. For a time I stood 
at the Receiving Office as the ambulances 
rolled in, one after another, in a steady 
stream. Before it had fairly halted the cur- 
tain would he tossed up, revealing the out- 
lines of the stretchers, two above and two 
below, with the heads towards you, and 


94 


PADRE 


usually there would be something covering 
the heads, for the night was chill. Every 
patient was tagged with the nature of his 
wound. These tags were quickly inspected 
by lantern light; then the order was given, 
“Ward 15, Ward 17, Ward 23,” and the 
ambulance would roll away, back up at the 
door of the ward to which it had been as- 
signed ; the stretchers would be lifted gently 
out and carried in. Then the ambulances 
would shoot back to the depot for other 
stretchers. 

Some of these boys were only thirty hours 
from the battle-field. 

There was no delay in handling the pa- 
tients. No effort was made to get them 
classified with absolute accuracy: to have 
done so would have kept the wards awake 
till daylight. The briefest record was taken 
of each man, and he was put to bed, to some 
bed, as quickly as possible. 

The Red Cross Staff had apportioned out 
the wards so that some one could be on hand 


PADRE 


95 


as the boys reached their beds. W e met each 
ambulance as it was unloaded, and then went 
down the line of beds with a word of wel- 
come, a bit of news, and distributed cigar- 
ettes, matches, and chewing gum. Very 
rarely we were asked for chewing tobacco, 
but we always had it. The gum was given 
to all who wanted it, hut especially to the 
gas cases, who could not smoke. In fact, 
none of the patients were allowed to smoke 
in those wards where these cases were placed, 
but that was only a temporary hardship, for 
the next day they were removed to their 
own especial wards. The cooks in the Mess 
Shack had hot soup all ready for serving; 
this was brought around in huge containers 
and served steaming hot to every new ar- 
rival. 

So, in a little over two hours, some five 
hundred patients had been taken from the 
hospital train and carried about a mile in 
ambulances; they had passed through the 
Receiving Office, been undressed and put 


96 


PADRE 


to bed. They had been served with hot 
soup, had had their smoke, and all lights 
were out by half past two in the morning. 
This meant splendid organization and fine 
team work. 

The next day the ward physicians and 
surgeons were busy classifying cases, the op- 
erating room was “going full speed ahead,” 
the stretcher bearers were working all day 
long transferring patients to their proper 
wards, and the chaplain also had “some day.” 
But the boys had had a good rest and showed 
the benefit. 

The first thought of the boys when they 
reached the Hospital was to cable home, so 
the morning after the arrival of a hospital 
train was spent in going through the wards 
and taking down cables. The afternoon 
would be spent in sending them, for sending 
a cable in France was an experience. There 
were usually from six to a dozen already in 
line before the one window at the Post 
Office where cables were accepted, and it 


PADRE 


97 


might take an hour to reach the head of the 
line. I saved much time and trouble by 
copying each cable on an official blank, of 
which I kept a stock on hand, with my 
Corona typewriter ; otherwise I should have 
had to spell out every word. 

But the clerk would never take your word 
for it that the American city named in the 
cable address actually existed. Each one 
had to be looked up in the official book. 
Quite likely you would be told triumphantly 
that there was no such place. Then you ask 
for the book and explain patiently that Chi- 
cago is not spelled with an “Sh,” and that 
Kingston has a “g.” 

Once past this bunker, you come to the 
question of the cost. If you are sending 
an “efm” message, that is, a “delayed” mes- 
sage that went at special rates, the clerk 
made a small St. Andrew’s cross and wrote 
some cabalistic ciphers in each compartment. 
Then she took a piece of paper and covered 
it with figures, emerging at last with the cor- 


98 PADRE 

rected bill. You are now over the hill, but 
not out of the long grass, for the next step 
is to enter a complete record of that cable 
in every column of two pages of a huge ac- 
count book. Now you tender payment and 
learn that there is no change in the till. So 
you go out and get the proper change, and 
then resume your stand at the foot of the 
line and once more work your way up to the 
window. Job on his ash heap received no 
better training in patience than he who stood 
before that little guichet sending cables to 
America. 

One day I reached this window with fif- 
teen cables in my hand. The long line that 
had formed behind me craned their necks to 
see, shook their heads, said something about 
“les Americains,” and went home for lunch. 
I stayed and went without. 

One day, after I had finished sending a 
bunch of messages, the clerk handed me a 
cable from Pennsylvania which they had 
been unable to deliver. It was addressed to 


PADRE 


99 


“Col. J. B.,” sent from Meadsville, Pennsyl- 
vania, and signed “D. D. Gill.” It had been 
returned from U. S. A. Base Headquarters 
endorsed “No such person known here.” I 
happened to know that Dr. Poux, the aural 
surgeon attached to Base Hospital 101, 
came from Meadsville, so at supper that 
evening I showed him the message. He told 
me that it was intended for Corporal James 
Gill, who was a patient in Ward 26. The 
Corporal was convalescent, and when I 
reached his ward I found he had gone to the 
Hut for the “movies.” There I found him 
by calling out his name. But think how 
many chances that cable had of being re- 
turned to Meadsville with the endorsement 
“No such person known here” and of the 
arpriety its return “would have caused at 
home! 

The chaplain is occasionally called upon 
to act as a physician, for there are cases that 
cannot be reached by medicine, but need the 
therapeutics of a sane psychology. 


ioo 


PADRE 


There was one boy, for instance, who was 
under treatment for rheumatism. The 
ward physician, Lieutenant Gruber, came 
to me to say that he was not making progress 
because he was discouraged. There were 
certain physical exercises that he should per- 
form each day, but he was not entering into 
them with any heart. He would perform 
each exercise to the point where his stiffen- 
ing muscles began to feel discomfort, and 
there he stopped. Instead of swinging his 
arms well back, he would halt them when 
they had reached two-thirds of the desired 
distance. The exercises, so performed, were 
not helping him, and he was in danger of a 
permanent stiffening of the muscles. 

I went to see the boy and had a talk with 
him. I told him how much interest the doc- 
tor took in him, and that he was certain he 
could make a complete recovery — if he 
would. It was all up to him. He owed it to 
his regiment that he should get back to the 
line as soon as possible. Others were doing 


PADRE 


101 


his work out there for him. He owed it to 
himself that he should not go back to Ameri- 
ca a rheumatic cripple; he owed it to his 
family and friends. Men at the Front were 
facing their enemy bravely, were bearing 
pain and discomfort. He had another kind 
of a battle to fight, but one which called for 
the same courage and determination. The 
issue of that battle was all up to him, and 
we were watching to see whether he was “all 
white” or “all yellow.” Then I took him 
outside, and we went through the exercises 
together. It was less than a week before the 
ward physician came to speak to me of the 
great improvement, both in spirit and con- 
dition. 

Captain Smedley came to me about an- 
other boy who was suffering from shock. He 
was convalescent, but not improving as rap- 
idly as he should because his mind was too 
much turned inward. He ought to have oc- 
cupation and interest outside himself. I 
took that man and made him my assistant. 


PADRE 


102 

Francisco Gioletti was an American of Ital- 
ian parentage who had lived all his life in 
America. He was a college graduate and 
an ordained Presbyterian clergyman who 
had volunteered, enlisting in the Infantry. 
In some advance he had dropped into a shell- 
hole with several other men and had thrown 
his arm around the neck of one of them when 
a shrapnel shell burst over them, completely 
severing the head above his arm, killing every 
man in that crater except Gioletti, who was 
uninjured but, naturally, suffering from 
shock. 

I gave him a note book and writing paper 
and asked him to go through two or three 
wards each day, making notes of anything 
needed from the Commissary or the Red 
Cross stores, and writing letters for the 
boys. He became immediately interested, 
and it was hard to keep him from exceeding 
his strength. When he went to the Com- 
missary to make purchases I went with him, 
for the sound of an automobile back-firing 


PADRE 


103 


or the bursting of a tire might leave him un- 
conscious on the ground. He improved rap- 
idly and was able to do more work. In the 
officers’ wards he was given small sums for 
services rendered, and these he saved for 
those boys who were without funds. In 
three weeks he was able to leave the Hos- 
pital, and I missed him greatly, for his spirit 
and his work ^ere fine. 

Gioletti reached the Front, spent three 
days there, and then was sent to a hospital, 
having been wounded in the head and leg. 
He made a good recovery and in the fall 
was sent back to this country loaded up 
with souvenirs which he had collected. 

Mr. Dana of the Y. M. C. A. came to me 
one day to speak of an eighteen-year-old boy 
who seemed to be in trouble and asked me 
to get hold of him. I went to his bed day 
after day and gave him every chance to 
‘‘open up” without trying to force his confi- 
dence. At last he came hobbling to my 
room, and we thrashed the matter out. He 


104 


PADRE 


was in a highly nervous state and trembled 
as he spoke. Night after night he dreamed 
over again the things he had seen at the 
Front, men who at the last minute had 
thrown down their arms being bayoneted, 
others lying on the ground with their throats 
cut. All his dreams were ghastly. 

Because he was only eighteen years old I 
went to his ward surgeon and asked if it 
would not be advisable to have this boy 
transferred to some other branch of the ser- 
vice. He said he would watch him for a few 
days and speak with me again. He stopped 
me one day and said that he would have the 
hoy set aside and not returned to the Front ; 
“As sure as we send him there he will be re- 
turned to us within three weeks with shock; 
he is on the verge of it now. We’ll send him 
to a rest camp for six months, and then he 
will be eager to get into the scrap again.” 
From the moment the boy was told of this 
decision his nightmares ceased. 

On the evening of August eighteenth a 


PADRE 


105 


French civilian, who had been knocked down 
by an automobile, was brought into Ward 
1A with an injured ankle. The next day 
the surgeon ordered him taken to the X- 
ray room for a photograph, but the patient, 
fearing an operation, leaped from the 
stretcher and hopped back to bed, to the 
great delight of the Ward. When I came 
around the boys told me all about it and 
urged me to stay and “watch the fun.” 

I went over and asked the man what the 
trouble was. He said that he was being kept 
in the Hospital by force, he was being made 
a prisoner. His contract with the American 
Government was up and he wanted to go 
home; we had no right to detain him. It 
was his ankle, anyway. I explained to him 
that many French people came to this Hos- 
pital asking for treatment by the American 
doctors; this was a rare privilege and the 
requests were usually refused. If he went 
home he would find few, if any, French sur- 
geons, for these were at the Front. Here 


106 


PADRE 


he could get great skill and good care for 
nothing. 

As this made no impression upon him, I 
attacked from another quarter. I told him 
that the United States Government would 
not accept any responsibility or pay any 
damages, if he thought himself entitled to 
compensation, unless we knew the exact 
nature of his injuries, and these could only 
be determined by a photograph, wherefore 
that photograph must be taken for our own 
protection. 

I do not want to give the impression that 
this patient was intractable or ugly — quite 
the contrary, he was the “bon camarade” 
throughout the discussion. He did not 
understand, that was all. However, when 
he found that the rules of the Hospital re- 
quired a photograph of his injury and that 
we could not make an exception to the rules, 
he yielded gracefully, and so the “fun” 
ended. 


CHAPTER VII 


T HERE is another field that offers a 
tremendous opportunity to the chap- 
lain, and that is the operating room. 
The boy who enters these doors steps upon 
new and disturbing ground. The bare, 
white walls, the tile floor, the odor of the 
anaesthetic, the first glimpse of the surgeons 
and nurses in their white operating gowns 
and caps — looking for all the world like a 
local branch of the Ku-Klux-Klan — the 
dreadful anticipation of the operation with 
its unknown possibilities and its certainty 
of pain, all these demand an especial courage 
and create an especial strain under any cir- 
cumstances, but all the more when one is far 
from home and surrounded by strange faces. 
Into this experience the chaplain goes 
107 


108 


PADRE 


with the boy as his personal friend, to “watch 
this hour” with him. 

In the operating room, above all other 
places, the psychological benefit of the chap- 
lain’s presence may be felt. In a recent 
number of the Literary Digest an article 
was quoted from The Modern Hospital and 
introduced with these words : 

“Especially is one's mental condition important 
when his nerves are to be tried by violent interfer- 
ence with the physical organism, such as is inevitable 
in a surgical operation." 

This article said in part: 

“Through all the varied sensations induced by the 
anaesthetic runs the distinct desire to have some hu- 
man hand to hold to and to communicate to that hand 
by the touch of your own consciousness as long as 
you can. I have demonstrated again and again with 
children and women of nervous temperament and big 
men who went under the anaesthetic with the fear of 
death upon them, that they all went under with less 
struggle and less anaesthetic if some one with human 
sympathy and kindly spirit held their hands and 
spoke to them reassuringly once in a while until they 
were no longer conscious." 


PADRE 


109 


There are times when, as Briggs says, “A 
feller needs a friend/’ needs a hand on his 
shoulder and some one who just stands by to 
tell him “It’s all right.” One day, for in- 
stance, we had, among other cases, a tuber- 
cular appendix ; a gall bladder and appendix 
case ; and then a huge abdominal carcinoma, 
the excision of which necessitated the re- 
moval of a foot of the duodenum and an op- 
eration which lasted about three hours. 

A boy may be brave and hide all signs of 
fear, he may come to the table with a smile 
and a jest, but underneath all seeming lurks 
the dread. 

I remember one boy who gripped my 
hand so tight that I could not possibly have 
left his side, even if I had wished to, and yet 
kept repeating, “Padre, are you there? 
Padre, are you there?” 

The patients seemed to take the anaesthetic 
better, they went under with less struggle 
and with less anaesthesia, when some one 


110 


PADRE 


stood beside them not as a surgeon, but sim- 
ply as a friend. 

I usually tried to see the operative cases 
in their own wards just before they were 
taken to the operating room and tell them 
that I would go with them. Sometimes they 
would frankly say, “That gives me more 
courage.” 

One man, just as he was slipping away 
under the anaesthetic, said, not at all know- 
ing what he said, “I am asleep, but I am 
conscious. You don’t believe me , but I 
know that there is some one near who is 
trying to give me consolation, and I appre- 
ciate — I appreciate the effort of consola- 
tion.” 

In the administration of the anaesthetic 
there may come a stage which is known as 
the stage of excitability. It does not always 
come, but it is always to be anticipated, espe- 
cially when the surgeons are rushed, when 
there are many operations to be performed, 
and the anaesthetic has to be crowded. One 


PADRE 


111 

man began to fight his battles all over again. 
He commenced to moan, and then to whis- 
per, but with a voice that grew steadily in 
force and intensity until it ended in a 
scream: 

“Shoot him! Shoot him! Shoot him! 
Don’t you see that Dutchman? He’s coming 
over — coming over! Shoot him, shoot him! 
Get that Dutchman — get him — GET 
HIM! Oh, my God! My God! God, God, 
God!” 

Every muscle under my hand was as 
taut as steel. It took four of us to hold him 
on the table. 

Another time a patient began to say, 
“You’ve got me. You’ve got me, Kid. 
You’ve got my number. I’m goin’ — I’m 
goin’.” 

The doctor who was administering the 
anaesthetic said, “Where are you going, 
boy? Going over the top?” 

The suggestion was enough. The boy 
began to go “over the top.” I could feel 


m 


PADRE 


his muscles tighten. “Yes, he said, “I’m 
going over the top. Come on, we got to get 
those Germans — get ’em ! Here they come — 
meet ’em now, meet ’em!” 

I stooped over him and said, “Why no, 
you can’t catch those Germans. Don’t you 
see? They’re running away; they’re run- 
ning away.” 

He relaxed at once and began to laugh; 
“Yes,” he laughed, “they’re running away. 
Gee, just see those Germans run.” 

Such incidents taught me that a patient 
going under the anaesthetic is as susceptible 
to suggestion as any hypnotic subject. 

One day a splendid specimen of physical 
development was brought into the operating 
room. He had an arm like a thigh, and 
there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh 
on his body. He was all bone and muscle. 
He had picked up a narrow brass cylinder, 
about four inches long and partly filled with 
white sand, upon the railroad track. He 
had tried to pick out the sand with a long 


PADRE 


119 


pin, and this brought him to us with one eye 
blown out, his hand badly torn, and two 
fingers to be amputated. 

As there were only two of us in the op- 
erating room besides the patient — the doc* 
tor who was administering the anaesthetic 
and myself — I realized that we would have 
our work cut out for us if this patient should 
pass through the stage of excitability. There- 
fore when he was well under the ether — or 
I thought he was — I said to him, “You are 
in your own room; you are in your own 
room, and you are going to sleep quietly; 
you are going to sleep very quietly.” 

He repeated each word after me: “I am 
in my own room, my own room ; I am going 
to sleep quietly, very quietly.” 

Then he suddenly stiffened, “No, by 
George, you’re wrong!” 

I was! 

With one sweep of his arm he threw me 
across the room until I struck the wall. He 
got a finger under the ether mask, flicked it 


1U 


PADRE 


up in the air, and began to sit up. I caught 
up the mask, which had fallen at my feet, 
tossed it to the doctor who caught it with 
one hand — with the other he was hanging 
on to his patient — and sprang back to the 
table. Others came running in from the 
sterilizing room, but it took five of us to 
hold him until that stage passed by. 

I had spoken a little bit too soon. I had 
brought to him the consciousness of a con- 
trast, the contrast between his bed and the 
operating table. He was almost ready to 
believe that he was in his own room, but not 
quite, so he sat up to find out where he 
was. 

There are certain operations where the 
presence of the chaplain is especially neces- 
sary, those that must be performed under 
local anaesthesia. In our Hospital, where we 
had so much pneumonia, there were many 
operations for empyema. This is due to an 
abscess forming in the pleural cavity. It 
often requires two operations; the first is 


PADRE 


115 ; 


usually simple and consists in opening the 
abscess, allowing the pus to evacuate — under 
the pressure of the lungs it often shoots out 
like a geyser — then washing out the wound 
with antiseptics and inserting a drainage 
tube. Sometimes, however, the abscess lies 
behind a rib. This necessitates either the 
“spreading” of the ribs by a vice, commonly 
called the rib-spreader, or it may demand 
the cutting out of about an inch of the in- 
tervening bone. Of course, no local anaes- 
thetic can wholly deaden the pain. 

I remember one boy, partly Indian, whom 
I accompanied into the operating room for 
this operation. The surgeon had to cut out 
a section of the rib, and I stepped around 
to the rear of the table to see just what prog- 
ress had been made and what was left to be 
done. I had hardly left him when I heard 
his cry, “Won’t you come back and talk to 
me. Padre?” It is needless to say that I did 
not stop to investigate the surgical situation. 

For some time after the operations for 


116 


PADRE 


empyema the abscesses must be allowed free 
drainage through the tube. This is greatly 
helped by the patient’s inflating a rubber 
bag, as the inflation and deflation of the 
lungs forces the abscess to discharge by 
pressure from behind. But the patients are 
weak, the exercise, repeated several times 
a day, grows wearisome and monotonous, 
the tendency is to scant the exercise, take 
longer rests, and minimize the benefit. But 
if some one stops by the bed, bucks the pa- 
tient up, gets him interested, the exercise 
will be performed in an eff ective way. Here 
is obviously a field of service for the chap- 
lain. 

Another class of opportunity came to 
me from my knowledge of French. I have 
a rather large vocabulary, speak the lan- 
guage fairly fluently, make every possible 
mistake in grammar, and have no shame. 
The net result was that my knowledge of 
French became a very considerable asset, 


PADRE 117 

and I was often sent for to act as inter- 
preter. 

I recall one man, a French civilian, who 
had been run over by a train and came to 
us with an arm gone at the shoulder and a 
hole in the back of his head into which you 
might have put your fist. 

I was called into the operating room, got 
his name and home address, and found out 
that he was a Catholic. The next thing was 
to get a priest. I took a camion and went 
down to the Church. 

Let me interrupt for a minute to say that 
everywhere in France I found the Catholic 
Church most willing to be of service. We 
received every possible courtesy and help, 
and their priests were ready to come to the 
wards or to the operating room at any hour 
of the day or night. 

On this particular occasion the only priest 
that I could find was a young man, almost 
a boy. He had never been in the operating 
room before, and no case we could have 


118 


PADRE 


brought him to would have been more try- 
ing to the nerves, for the man and the room 
alike were covered with blood. The young 
priest trembled like a leaf ; the sweat stood 
out in drops upon his face and hands; the 
whole scene sickened him ; yet he stood to his 
guns, went through the service for the dy- 
ing, and only left the room when the sur- 
geons were giving the anaesthetic. This 
man died, either on the operating table or 
shortly after leaving it. 

There is a sequel to this story. As the 
man was a civilian and without any family 
in France, we turned the body over to the 
city for burial. Two days later I was called 
to the Mail Room by an orderly to act as 
interpreter. I found a hearse containing 
a casket, and fifty or sixty men and women 
gathered at the gate of the Hospital. These 
were the friends of the man who had died, 
fellow- workmen on the docks and their 
families, and they had come to bury him. 
They asked me to take charge of the cere- 


PADRE 


119 


mony, but I told them that this man had 
been a Catholic and I was a Protestant. 
This called for consideration and a consulta- 
tion. 

Presently the two who acted as spokes- 
men for the party returned to say: “Well, 
there is only one God, and there is only 
one heaven. If you are willing we would 
like to have you take the service.” So we 
all fell in behind the hearse and walked to 
the cemetery. 

I was in the center of a group of five men 
who chatted with me all the way to the en- 
trance to the grounds. Then, and then not 
till then, it flashed across my mind that 
these people were all French, not one of 
them understood a word of English. If I 
took the usual burial and committal service 
nothing I said would be understood. So, 
standing at the head of the grave, and with 
no time for preparation, I translated the 
service from English into French, begin- 
ning with “I am the Resurrection and the 


120 


PADRE 


Life,” thence passing to the closing words 
of the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, 
“Behold I show you a mystery; we shall not 
all sleep, but we shall all be changed,” and 
I finished that chapter. Then came the 
committal. “Foreasmuch as it hath pleased 
Almighty God to take out of this world the 
soul of this departed ...” and finally the 
prayer and benediction. 

I know I made every possible mistake, but 
they understood me and were evidently 
grateful. But this is the point : if some one 
had come to me in my own parish to tell 
me that a gathering of French people were 
at my door who wished me to conduct a 
funeral in their language, I would haye 
answered promptly, “It is preposterous, ab- 
surd, and impossible. I never did such a 
thing, I have no such command of the 
French language, and I positively cannot 
do it.” 

I never heard any one in France say “I 
cannot do it.” Whatever one was asked 


PADRE 


m 


to do he did, imperfectly, with many blem- 
ishes, but to the best of his ability. If any 
of us had been asked to make a pair of 
shoes we would have replied, “I have no 
last, no tools, and no experience, but have 
you got the leather ?” 

From time to time patients were brought 
to the operating room who were French and 
spoke no English. Try to put yourself in 
the place of one of these. Imagine being 
brought into the operating room of a hos- 
pital where, no matter what emergency 
arose, you could not speak with those around 
you. Would there not be a very definite 
feeling of relief when some one entered that 
room to whom you could speak, or through 
whom you might, if you wished, communi- 
cate with the surgeons or the nurses? 

One evening at half past ten the ambu-, 
lance brought in a Frenchman who had 
been run over by a train. The bones of the 
lower leg had been crushed and as he lay 
on the operating table in the anaesthetizing. 


PADRE 


m 

room the leg formed an uncanny acute angle 
half way down from the knee to the ankle. 
He had had morphine, but it hardly seemed 
to have had any effect and as the instru- 
ments had to be sterilized for twenty min- 
utes there was a long time to wait. I stayed 
with him to “buck him up,” answer ques- 
tions, and tell him “It will only be a few 
minutes more” — “Ils sont presque prets.” 
He suffered greatly, and I was almost as 
glad as he when the surgeon came to put the 
ether cone over his face. This was my first 
amputation, and when it was over I felt that 
I was qualified for anything the Hospital 
could produce. 

In September a French woman was 
brought to us from near Savanay, where a 
train had passed over her as she was gath- 
ering coals from the track, severing both 
legs just below the knees. I was in the op- 
erating room when they brought her in and 
very glad of my ability to speak with her. 
She was Romanist, of course, so I took the 


PADRE 


123 


camion and went for the priest. The sur- 
geons were very busy over her when we 
returned, and we seemed to reach an im- 
passe immediately, for the priest said he 
would not hear confession unless he was 
alone with his penitent and the doctors could 
not, of course, leave their patient. We 
solved the difficulty when the two of us who 
understood French left the room. Then the 
doctors went on with their work and the 
priest went on with his. 

The old lady — she was sixty years old — 
was put to bed until four o’clock that after- 
noon, for she was in no condition for an 
operation when she arrived. When she was 
brought back to the operating room her one 
cry was “Ne coupez pas mes jambes.” Poor 
soul! There were no “jambes” to cut, she 
had left them behind on the railroad track. 
They put a surgeon, assistant, and nurse to 
work on each side of the table so as to 
shorten the time of the operation, as she 
was not strong enough to stand much ether, 


PADRE 


124 

and amputated both legs at the knee in rec- 
ord time. 

For some days she seemed to be doing 
well and was bright and cheery. I promised 
her that the Red Cross would see to it that 
she was equipped with a very wonderful 
pair of artificial limbs, and told her what 
remarkable things they really were. She 
was always brave and cheerful, but in a few 
days pneumonia developed and within a 
week she was dead. 

On July twenty-fourth a little four-year- 
old French girl was brought in with an “egg 
shell” fracture of the skull and a broken 
leg — another automobile accident. She was 
put to bed in the corridor, just outside the 
operating room door, where I found her, 
whimpering and tossing and only half con- 
scious. She dropped asleep while I was sit- 
ting beside her and holding her little, hot 
hand. 

By evening her pulse was very rapid. 


PADRE 


125 


showing brain pressure, and it was evident 
that an immediate operation was necessary. 
It was well after ten o’clock when they came 
for her. Her parents were sitting by her 
bed, so I took them to the mail orderly’s 
room to await the result of the operation. 

As I was very doubtful whether the child 
would ever leave the table alive I borrowed 
Captain Scott’s car and went for a priest 
who might sit with the family and comfort 
them. One of their own nation, religion, and 
tongue could break any ill news far better 
than I, a foreigner and a stranger. 

At that hour I had some difficulty in find- 
ing a priest, and when I did find one he was 
in bed. However, we woke him up and 
brought him back to the Hospital, where I 
left him with the family while I went to 
the operating room to find how matters were 
progressing. I was only gone three min- 
utes, but when I returned the priest had 
disappeared. He had taken two francs 


126 PADRE 

from the father for a candle to be burned 
before the Virgin Mary, had jumped into 
the automobile, and gone back to bed. I 
dare say the thought of that candle was 
more comforting than anything I could say, 
but it still left me the task of breaking the 
news in my clumsy French if the child 
should happen to die upon the table. • How- 
ever, at midnight the operation was oven 
and the child alive, with a “thirty per cent 
chance of recovery,” the surgeon said. So I 
went back and told the parents that the op- 
eration was over, the child had stood it splen- 
didly, and the doctors hoped she would be 
well in three months, but that it had been 
a severe injury and they must pray to the 
good God. 

I am glad xo say that the child made a 
very remarkable recovery and became the 
pet of the entire Hospital. An American 
officer fitted her out with clothing, a very 
pretty coat and hat, a muff, and fur trimmed 
gloves. But whether clad in her new finery 


PADRE 


127 


or in her “nightie” she flirted outrageously 
with every one about her ; she said she would 
stay in the Hospital until the Boche was 
gone, and then she was coming to America. 


CHAPTER VIII 


I N this chapter I wish to introduce you 
to a few of our wards and let you listen 
to some of our patients, for these boys 
have been through great experiences and 
they are well worth listening to if you can 
only get them talking. This is not always 
easy, however; sometimes because they like 
to forget the things that they have seen, 
sometimes because they shrink from the ap- 
pearance of boasting, and occasionally be- 
cause they lack the dramatic instinct and 
simply cannot put their stories into words. 
To these the war has been just one long, 
hard, disagreeable job. 

One day at Evacuation 13 we had a ward \ 
full of boys who had seen the fighting since 
Chateau-Thierry in July; they had been at 
St. Mihiel, at Verdun, and in the Argonne. 
128 


PADRE 129 

I asked some of them what the most dra- 
matic event had been in their experience, 
“If you could tell but one tale when you 
reached home, which would you select? 
What has been the biggest thing that you 
have seen?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” they said. “Dodging 
whiz-bangs, I expect.” 

A whiz-bang, by the way, is an Austrian 
shell which travels at such high velocity that 
you have little, if any, chance to dodge it. 
The shriek of its passage in the air is fol- 
lowed almost instantly by the sound of the 
explosion. 

These boys had been through experi- 
ences that might have left Homer dumb as 
well as blind, but they had no words with 
which to phrase them. 

Let us start with Skinner. One day I 
found him lying on a stretcher at the door 
of the operating room, waiting for his turn, 
so I drew up a camp-stool and sat down be- 


130 PADRE 

side him for a chat. He had been wounded 
in the capture of Hill 204. 

The number merely refers to the height of 
the hill in meters, so there might be, and 
were, several hills in the different sectors 
that were known under the same term. Of 
this height the paper said: “Nothing more 
commanding than Hill 204 can be imagined. 
The Marne Valley, with Chateau-Thierry 
and many other little towns, can be seen 
stretching along for miles on the one side, 
with Vaux on the other.” 

As we have at least three other boys in 
the Hospital, Dalrymple, Militis, and 
Campbell, who were wounded in this action, 
we can put their stories together and get a 
composite picture of the battle. 

The French command had decided that 
this hill, with its vantage points for obser- 
vation, must be wrested from the enemy. 
Their own troops were to form the center 
of the attack, but they asked for two Ameri- 
can platoons (of fifty-eight men each) to 


PADRE 


131 


form the wings, which should sweep around 
to the sides and rear, thus cutting off the re- 
treat of the enemy when the French center 
should have driven them from the sum- 
mit. 

The slopes of the hill were bare, but 
the top was covered with trees and under- 
brush. 

At four o’clock in the afternoon the bar- 
rage was started, and at six the attack be- 
gan. The men went forward, one squad at 
a time, in little rushes up the hill. When 
one squad had made its distance it would lie 
down and wait for the next to come forward 
and thus keep the formation. When they 
reached the fringe of the woods they halted 
again to reform and complete the line. 

Up to this time there had been no cas- 
ualties, but now the platoon came under 
both machine gun and shrapnel fire. From 
this time on men began to fall. Skinner 
seems to have advanced about three hun- 
dred yards into the woods when a rifle ball 


132 


PADRE 


struck a hand-grenade that one of the boys 
was carrying. The explosion killed one 
man and wounded two, Skinner’s leg being 
broken so that the bone almost protruded. 
They lay out in the woods all night, not 
knowing whether they were inside the Ger- 
man or the American lines. At eleven 
o’clock they heard the yells and cries as the 
Germans counter-attacked, but did not 
know what the result of that attack had 
been. 

They were afraid to call for help, for if 
the Germans had been successful, help could 
only have meant capture. 

Shells burst around them throughout the 
night, lighting up the darkness with sudden 
blinding flashes, revealing the outlines of 
fallen men, white faces, and shattered 
bodies, filling their nostrils with the acrid 
smoke, and leaving a darkness that was the 
more intense. They were without water and 
suffered keenly from the lack. One by one 
those who lay around him died very quietly 


PADRE 


133 


during the night; the thirst, he thought, 
hastened the death of some. 

He had bandaged his leg with his first 
aid pack, and when the German barrage died 
down somewhat he started to crawl very 
slowly, dragging that leg through the 
underbrush and over the fallen timber. 
Hour after hour he crept on, painfully con- 
quering one obstacle after another, until 
daylight found him on the edge of the woods. 
Here the French saw him and sent their 
stretcher bearers to carry him to a dressing- 
station. 

Sergeant Militis in Ward 18 told me that 
his platoon had gone only a little ways be- 
yond the fringe of the woods when he was 
struck. He had noticed that his men were 
bunching together and had just ordered 
them to spread out and scatter when a ma- 
chine gun bullet carried off* his thumb, 
knocking his rifle from his grasp. As he 
stooped to pick up the rifle four more bul- 
lets struck him. A less severely wounded 


134 


PADRE 


man crept over and bound up his wounds 
and then these two started to crawl back, but 
every time they stirred a machine gunner, 
posted in a tree, sprayed bullets over and 
about them. At last one of them “got” this 
sniper and set them free to assume their slow 
and painful progress to the rear. 

On their way they came to a shell hole oc- 
cupied by two Germans. As they had left 
their rifles behind them and were weapon- 
less, the discovery was startling. They lay 
still for a time, but as nothing happened and 
they were steadily weakening from loss of 
blood Militis started to work his way down 
into the shell hole. Dusk had fallen, so 
that he could not clearly see, and it was only 
when he was near enough to stretch out his 
hand and touch them that he knew that both 
the Germans were dead. 

Further on, in another shell hole, he found 
a machine gunner, Findley Taylor, who was 
coming up with the supports. 4 Despite his 
warning that snipers were at work, Taylor 


PADRE 


135 


reached up and drew Militis and his com- 
panion into the shell hole, poured water on 
their faces, gave each of them a drink, and 
bound up their wounds. Then he went on 
with his gun. Five minutes later word came 
back that Taylor had been instantly killed 
by a bullet in the brain. At nine o’clock 
that evening the French found them and 
brought them in. 

Dalrymple and Campbell had had much 
the same experience, except that they were 
less fortunate than Militis, for they were 
compelled to spend the night in the woods, 
under shell fire, without water and suffering 
severely from thirst. All around them men 
were dying throughout the night. There 
was the same painful crawl over obstacles 
to the edge of the woods before the stretcher 
bearers found them and brought them in. 

Dalrymple was operated on July twenty- 
seventh. On the twenty-ninth I had a hurry 
call to his ward, for a tiny bit of shrapnel 
had worked its way until it had cut a blood 


136 


PADRE 


vessel, and he nearly lost his life from that 
hemorrhage. Tourniquets, which soon be- 
come very painful, were put on both arms 
and on both legs. For an hour he asked for 
water, but all I could do was to stand by and 
moisten his lips from time to time. Saline 
solution was injected and he pulled through, 
but a few days later gas gangrene devel- 
oped and they had to amputate the leg at 
the knee. However, the little piece of 
shrapnel, done up in a bit of gauze, lay on 
the table at the head of his bed, to his great 
satisfaction. 

In Ward lA, on the first bed to the right 
of the entrance, lay a French soldier who 
was slightly delirious. He kept jumping 
out of bed and the nurses were having all 
kinds of trouble with him. One night he 
thought we were Germans and he was a 
prisoner who wanted to escape. The next 
evening when I went to him he explained 
that the mosquito netting which formed a 
canopy over his bed was about to fall and 


PADRE 


137 


crush him; he did not understand why the 
nurses had left him to be “ecrase” and did 
not care to save him. “Pourquoi, mon 
Capitaine?” I made him touch the canopy 
with his fingers, showed him how light it 
was, told him that it was securely held and 
could not fall, but even if it did it would 
come down so lightly that he would not 
know it. I told him that he was with 
friends, where every one was taking good 
care of him and there was nothing for him 
to do but shut his eyes, go to sleep, and sleep 
well. He touched his forehead with the 
French salute and said, “Merci, mon Capi- 
taine,” turned over, and went to sleep. 
There was no more trouble with him that 
night. 

I thought it spoke well for some officer of 
France. The man saw my uniform and 
thought it was his own captain who had 
come to see him. The assurance of his 
capitaine that all was well, that he was be- 


138 


PADRE 


ing cared for and could safely go to sleep, 
satisfied him completely. No delirium could 
destroy his confidence in his captain’s word ! 

And speaking of that mosquito canopy 
reminds me. In July we had a pest of flies. 
I wrote home : 

“The flies are awful. I do not think I ever saw 
a more cantankerous lot except in Philistia when we 
pitched our camp among the cactus hedges. They 
simply climb up into your lap and want to be petted. 
It doesn’t do any good to put them down and tell 
them to run away. They keep coming back. They 
are so affectionate and tame that you hate to be 
rough with them, but I do wish they would go away. 

“The Hospital has organized a major offensive. 
Fly paper is everywhere, and ‘swatters’ have been 
distributed. At eleven o’clock every morning we 
‘go over the top/ for orders have been issued that at 
that hour every patient who is able shall leave his 
bed and ‘swat’ flies. When I was making the rounds 
yesterday the wardmaster suddenly shouted ‘eleven 
o’clock/ and, like a disciplined army, every patient 
left his bed or his chair, those who were playing cards 
dropped their hands, those who were reading laid 
down their books, every man took up his ‘swat/ and 
‘no prisoners were taken.’ ” 


PADRE 


139 


These boys are never so happy as when 
they are singing doleful songs. They insist 
on taking their pleasures sadly. One of 
them was found singing softly and happily 
“ Nobody Loves Me.” A whole ward will 
burst into song with “Annie Laurie/’ “My 
Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” and the 
“Long, Long Trail.” They sing at the top 
of their lungs, “I want to go home to Mich- 
igan, I don’t want to stay any more.” But 
they sang that song going into action not 
long ago, and when the wounded were sent 
back to the dressing-station, they tore off 
their bandages as soon as the surgeons were 
out of sight and tried to get back to the lines. 
Some succeeded, but others were found un- 
conscious along the line. They were not 
looking for Michigan that day. 

But not all the wards are in the mood to 
sing, in some of them there is a good deal of 
pain. For instance, in Ward 18 lies Joseph 
Garafi. On the ninth of August, 1918, at 
three o’clock in the afternoon, his company 


140 


PADRE 


crossed the Marne where the river was ford- 
able. To be sure, the water was up to their 
necks and they had to hold their rifles and 
other accouterments high above their heads, 
but they could get over without throwing a 
bridge across the stream. 

They slept that night in the shelter of a 
ruined village on the other side. At half 
past four the next afternoon the German 
barrage fell on them as they attacked the 
hill which rose behind the town. None the 
less they went through this barrage to the 
top of the hill, losing, however, very many of 
their men, but at the summit they came 
under a fire of machine guns which swept 
both flanks. They were forced to retreat 
to within a hundred yards of the river, where 
they attempted to advance to the right, fol- 
lowing a village street running in that di- 
rection. Here they ran into another machine 
gun fire, again losing heavily. They took 
refuge under the river bank, but as the fire 
kept up for an hour the order was given 


PADRE 


141 


again to attack. Once more they were 
beaten back, but they had taken prisoners 
from whom information might be obtained, 
so as evening fell they retreated, taking 
with them six prisoners, one of whom was a 
sergeant, but leaving their wounded be- 
hind. 

Some of these, however, including Garafi, 
were carried to a ditch half full of water, 
which gave them something to drink and 
shelter from the German fire. Here Garafi 
was lying, with his arm and one leg in the 
water and the rest of his body out, when, 
after nightfall, the Germans came over. 
There were six men in this ditch; one had 
both legs badly injured by a hand grenade, 
another was shot in the abdomen, a third 
in the hips, the fourth in the back of the 
head, while Garafi’s leg was shattered. On 
this visit the Germans took their first-aid 
packs and promised to send stretcher bear- 
ers for them — a promise which was not kept. 
Later I was told by surgeons serving at the 


142 


PADRE 


Front that the German wounded who 
reached their station came with their wounds 
bandaged with burlap or with brown pa- 
per — which explains the theft of the first-aid 
packs. 

Harris (of course, the names given are all 
fictitious, except that of Garafi), wounded 
in the intestines, was the first to “go West.” 
On the fifth day Pastoris, wounded in the 
head, went; Corporal Mathews died on the 
sixth day; he was further away than the 
others and was calling for help all the time, 
for help that could not come. Only Weston 
and Garafi now survived. On the fourth 
day Garafi saw a plum in the ditch about 
three yards away; he crawled and got it. 
This was the first food of any kind that 
had passed his lips. 

The following day two Germans came 
over and searched them, taking whatever 
they could find, including forty-five francs 
that Garafi had in his pockets. One of them 
asked him if he had any souvenirs, and 


PADRE 


143 

Garafi handed him his leggings, which he 
had taken off and was holding in his hand, 
as they were too tight. They left, promis- 
ing to send for them at ten o’clock that 
night and have them taken to a hospital, but 
again the promise was not kept — indeed the 
Germans evacuated their positions during 
the night, and they saw no more of them. 

On the seventh day Garafi discovered a 
German dugout about fifty yards down the 
ditch and they set to work to reach that 
shelter. Weston lay on his back and edged 
along, inch by inch, by digging his heels into 
the ground. Garafi crawled along on his left 
side, but it took them two hours to cover that 
fifty yards. Here they found a blanket and 
half of a shelter tent. Getting into and out 
of that dugout must have been painful work, 
for there were no steps and the floor was 
about a yard below the entrance, but they 
had to leave their shelter to get water. They 
had two American canteens and one large 


PADRE 


144 

German canteen in which to store their sup- 

ply- 

On this same day Garafi found an aban- 
doned garden a painful distance away, but 
he crawled to it and was rewarded by se- 
curing some radishes and a number of small 
apples, which he stuffed into his blouse. For 
seven days they had had only water and one 
plum! 

On the eighth day he was too exhausted to 
go out ; his leg was in an unspeakable condi- 
tion and very offensive; the flies were a 
pest. The ninth day found the dugout so 
foul that he made the effort and came out, 
leaving Weston behind. He crawled down 
to the river, calling for help, but nothing 
stirred on the further side. On the tenth 
day he began to crawl up stream, always 
on his left side, where the skin was worn 
off till the flesh was raw. He had taken 
half the shelter tent with him in his ex- 
pedition, and he slept under this, while he 
had picked up a bit of carpet and some ex- 


PADRE 145 

celsior from which he made a bed. The 
eleventh day brought him to a bridge whose 
last span was missing, but he crawled over 
this as far as he could go. I doubt whether 
he knew clearly what he was doing, or had 
any further purpose in mind than to get as 
near the American lines as possible. But 
when he reached the ragged edge of the 
broken arch he saw a barrel caught in the 
wreckage around the abutment of the pier. 

Somehow or other he worked his way 
down, laid his arms around that barrel, and 
then pushed off, trusting to the current to 
bring him to the American shore. How far 
he drifted I do not know, but the stream 
was French and proved loyal to an ally of 
France. It brought him at last to the bank 
where his own regiment was entrenched; 
here they found him and brought him in af- 
ter eleven days between the lines. 

His was a story of courage and amazing 
vitality that deserves recording among the 
annals of the Hospital, 


146 


PADRE 


We had a Belgian soldier of many scars 
at St. Nazaire, a man forty-three years old, 
whose most recent wound was in the leg. 
Meeting him one day as he hobbled past my 
quarters on a cane I called him into my room 
to question him. He told me his story in 
French, and I wrote it down in English, 
translating it again to him until he had cor- 
rected every little detail. Of course I have 
altered all names, whether of places or of 
persons, but these are the only changes that 
I have made in his narrative. 

I tell this story, as I have told the tales 
that fell from the lips of other boys, simply 
as one that was told to me, but the state- 
ment, with all names and details that I have 
suppressed, has already been placed in offi- 
cial hands for full investigation. 

I was living in Basarde when the war be- 
gan and entered the army in July of 1914. 
We were first sent to the frontier, but after 
twenty-four hours of fighting we were com- 
pelled to retreat and were withdrawn to the 


PADRE 


147 


forts of Liege. I was stationed at Fort 
Kleber. This was wrecked by the German 
shells and we were at last sent out by the 
one available road, the road to Antwerp, 
just before the surrender of Liege. We 
were at Antwerp until the evacuation, when 
we were sent to Ostend by boat. Later we 
were driven from Ostend to Nieuport and 
Dixmude. When we advanced and drove 
the Germans out of Recqnon, which we occu- 
pied for ten or twelve days, the women of 
the town came to the Belgian army asking 
help for their children. They said that the 
Germans had spent the first days of their 
occupation in looting the town, in packing 
up their plunder and loading four freight 
trains which had been sent, full of loot, into 
Germany. When this was over they began 
to amuse themselves. They drank them- 
selves drunk and then forced the Belgian 
children to drink until they also were intox- 
icated. The Belgian attack was a surprise; 
when the Germans saw the Belgians coming 


148 


PADRE 


they cut off the right hands of the children 
at the elbow, saying that these children at 
least should never fight against Germany. 
I saw and carried in my arms myself chil- 
dren of five, six, nine years of age who had 
lost their right arms. There were many chil- 
dren so treated in this town alone. We 
killed one German here who had in his pocket 
the arm and hand of a child who must have 
been not over five or six years of age. 

They also cut off the fingers of girls and 
the lobes of their ears, in order to remove 
quickly their rings or ear-rings. The fathers 
and mothers of Recqnon told us these things, 
and I saw the ears and hands that had been 
thus mutilated. They used my handkerchief 
to bandage the hand of a young girl ; at least 
I gave it to a woman to use as a bandage and 
her young daughter had had her finger cut 
off. 

Married women who were enceinte had 
been ripped open with the bayonet; I saw 
their bodies lying along the streets. Dr. 


PADRE 


149 


Merseau, a Belgian doctor who had returned 
to Recqnon about the same time with us, 
tried to save the life of one of these women, 
a Mme. Carnailles, hut without success. 
This I saw, for at the doctor’s request I 
helped put Mme. Carnailles in an ambulance 
which had accompanied the Belgian army. 

One day in August I was in command of 
a patrol on scout duty. About ten o’clock 
at night we entered Verenton, where we 
heard cries for help coming from a house 
which was used as a summer residence and 
owned by a wealthy merchant of Mortonge, 
M. Henri De Beert. I took two of my men, 
leaving the rest outside. In one of the rooms 
on the first floor M. and Mme. De Beert 
were locked in with a German on guard at 
the door. In an adjoining room were four 
Boches, holding the seventeen year old 
daughter. Mile. Elise De Beert. . . . 

When we broke open the door the four 
Germans fled, dragging the girl by the heels ; 
they ran out of the house by a rear door, and 


150 


PADRE 


my men opened fire on them. They then 
ripped the girl up with their bayonets, 
throwing the body in the ditch. My men 
killed these four. I took the identification 
tag of one of them; his name was Heinrich 

H n. There were eight more Germans 

in the house, scattered around looting; all 
twelve were Uhlans. I carried the girl into 
the nearest house; the woman living there 
sent for Dr. Lesteur. He came in an auto- 
mobile and took the girl to the Hospital at 
Mortonge, but she died en route. 

A day or so after this we were on patrol . 
near Arigny, on the F rench frontier. It was 
about two o’clock in the afternoon when we 
entered the town. In a poor little house I 
found a widow with two children, little girls 
of three or four years of age; the children 
had had their heads crushed in. The mother 
told me that that morning four or five hun- 
dred Death’s Head Hussars had camped in 
the Square. They had foraged for food and 
five of them had entered her house. She had 


PADRE 


151 


very little food and they were angered. 
They demanded money ; she had only five or 
ten francs, which she had given them. They 
wanted more, so they tied the woman to a 
chair and then crushed in the heads of the 
children with their rifle butts. The two dead 
girls were lying on a little bed. I saw them 
there. 

About the twenty-fourth of August my 
regiment was camped near a farm on the 
outskirts of Bettency. In the barn I saw a 
woman of thirty-five or thirty-six years, with 
both breasts cut off, nailed to the ground by 
two long spikes about ten inches long which 
had been driven through the flesh above the 
knees. These spikes were intended to fasten 
the roof to the heavy beams. She had evi- 
dently been beaten, for there were many 
blue spots on the body. 

My brother lives at Wiltsbrugge. He 
was in the Belgian army at the time of the 
following incident. His wife was living with 
their eleven children at their home. A patrol 


152 


PADRE 


of perhaps two hundred Death’s Head Hus- 
sars camped in a field of hops, some 500 
meters away. They scattered in small par- 
ties to loot the town. Ten or twelve of the 
Hussars came to the house of my brother, 
who is a carpenter. They looted the house 
and demanded money. The children in the 
house fled to the street, but the Germans 
caught them. They tied the woman in a 
chair with her hands bound behind her back. 
Two of the older children returned from 
school for lunch. The Germans threw them 
to the floor and cut off their arms at the 
elbows, under the eyes of the mother. This 
woman with her children and many other 
women and children of this town were car- 
ried off to Germany as prisoners. I heard 
this tale from the lips of the women of this 
same town, who also had been taken pris- 
oners on the same day, but had escaped later 
and returned to Belgium. 

My wife and two children were carried 
from this town on this day into Germany, 


PADRE 


153 


where they now are. I have not heard from 
them nor of them in three and a half years. 
This deportation took place because one 
woman had thrown burning petrol from a 
window on the Germans who were at the 
door below. 

I have read this statement and swear that 
it is the truth, and nothing but the truth, 
(Signed) “D. R. Reeth ” 

I showed this statement to a Belgian gen- 
tleman who is in this country on official busi- 
ness. He had been at Dinant when the Ger- 
mans lined up the entire male population 
and shot every third man. He happened to 
be the second in that line, to which chance 
he owes his life. He told me that he had 
seen two children who had lost their arms, 
and also babies, impaled on German bay- 
onets, being paraded around the town. 

He gave this much confirmation to the 
statement of “D. R. Reeth,” that he knew 
well “M. Henri De Beert,” his summer res- 


154 PADRE 

idence at “Verenton” and his home at “Mor- 
tonge.” But he had been in this country 
since the fall of 1914, so the first news of 
any tragedy in the family of “M. De Beert” 
came to him as he read the paper I had 
placed in his hands. 

In Ward IT we had a German prisoner 
who said that he had been at work for four 
years before the outbreak of the War in a 
German factory where he was making hand 
grenades and bombs. 

In this ward also we had a boy who had 
been severely wounded in the abdomen by 
shrapnel. One day when I stopped at his 
bed he took hold of my belt and drew me 
down, saying, “Won’t you come closer?” I 
thought he wished to whisper something and 
bent to listen; he said, “Won’t you pray for 
me?” Well, suppose it had been your own 
son, what would you have done? I did it, 
and put my arms around him as I knelt by 
his bed, and then we had a very earnest, 
heartfelt little prayer together. The next 


PADRE 


155 


morning when I went to his bed on my 
way to breakfast I found the nurses and the 
wardmaster there, but the boy was gone. 
He died as I was coming in the door. So I 
sent for the firing squad and the bugler, and 
we went with him on that last march the sol- 
dier makes and left him beneath the little 
white cross that bears his name. 

In the corridor outside Ward 5 we had 
a boy who had been wounded, cured, and 
transferred from Savanay to a transport 
which was sailing from St. Nazaire for 
home. Somehow or other he caught cold, 
and the cold went to his lungs, so they or- 
dered him to be removed from the transport 
to our Hospital. There was something 
tragic about the circumstances that touched 
us all; to have the long-looked-for day ar- 
rive; to have said good-by to those you left 
behind; to be actually embarked for home; 
to see and hear all about you the stir 
and bustle that heralds sailing day; and 
then at the last moment to be sent ashore 


156 


PADRE 


and begin again the weary hospital round! 

But it was necessary; he had pneumonia 
when he reached us, and his heart was not 
in good condition. Each time I went to him 
he was asleep, so in the evening I sat beside 
his bed and waited until he should rouse. 
In about half an hour he opened his eyes 
and then I had a little talk with him. He 
said his chaplain had told him to remem- 
ber John 3:16, so I quoted those verses to 
him. He asked me if I would write a letter 
home for him in the morning — he felt too 
tired to try to think that night — and I told 
him I would come up right after breakfast. 
As a matter of fact I went to him before 
breakfast, but there would be no letters ever 
again for home; he had died a few minutes 
before seven. 

I had telephoned the evening before to 
Savanay, where he had a friend and class- 
mate whom he wished to see. This man ar- 
rived early the next morning, but only to 
attend his funeral. He asked for the flag 


PADRE 


157 


that covered the body of his friend, that he 
might take it home to the father and mother, 
and as the flag belonged to the Red Cross 
we were able and glad to surrender it. 

On J uly thirtieth I was called away from 
the dinner table by an orderly who came to 
tell me that there was a man in the operat- 
ing room who wished to see the chaplain. 
Down on the docks a stack of spiles had 
fallen, knocking him into the river, where 
one had struck him ; several ribs were broken 
and the lungs punctured. After the opera- 
tion he was taken to Ward 3, where I visited 
him again. He told me he had no one at 
home except his mother — “The best girl a 
fellow could have,” he said. He grew 
steadily Worse, and in the evening it was 
quite evident that he could not live. 

I went to him again at nine o’clock. He 
was in one of the smaller of the wards, a 
ward that was square in shape with three 
beds on each side and two opposite the door. 
From time to time I spoke with him, quot- 


158 


PADRE 


in g a verse of scripture or just a few 
sentences of a prayer. A few minutes be- 
fore ten I leaned over and said, “Do you 
feel that you can trust Jesus to carry you 
all the way?” He opened his eyes and 
looked up at me; “I feel very sure of that,” 
he whispered. 

Soon after the bugle began the call of 
Taps — “Lights Out.” It was just far 
enough away to soften the sound, and the 
call came very sweet and mellow into that 
quiet room. As the notes rose, quivered, and 
fell he breathed once, twice — a long pause — 
then once more and — never again. He had 
died to the summons of Taps. 

It made a deep impression on that little 
w r ard and as they drew the white screens 
around the bed and began to prepare the 
body for burial I sat on the side of one of 
the other beds and talked with the boys. I 
told them how much it meant, when you came 
to that hour when you have to stand alone 
and to that road where no human friend 


PADRE 


159 


can keep you company, to be able to feel 
beneath you the strength of the Everlasting 
Arms, to know that there is one who never 
leaves us nor forsakes us ; how much it meant 
to be really able to say, “When I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death 
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” 

Then I told them of his last words to me, 
and how glad I was that I could write home^ 
and tell his mother his reply to my question, 
“Do you feel that you can trust Jesus to 
carry you all of the way?” “I feel very sure 
of that.” 

One boy said, “Gee, a thing like that 
makes you think a lot about home.” 

Then we talked of other things, until the 
stretcher came, the screens were removed, 
and the white-sheeted body was carried out. 
I went with the bearers to the door and then 
came back, and standing in the center of 
the ward we had a little prayer for the boy 
whose bed was empty, for the home he had 
left but to which he should not return, for 


160 PADRE 

ourselves and our homes, and then the bene- 
diction. 

The lights were out and all the wards were 
dark, with just the night lights burning as I 
said “Good night,” and they answered, 
“Good night, Chaplain;” “Good night. 
Padre.” 

But the next day I put a Y. M. C. A. en- 
tertainment troupe in that ward to cheer 
them up. God knows we all needed it. 

After every death some one of the Red 
Cross wrote home to the family, telling them 
what they could of the circumstances of their 
boy’s illness and death. Many of these let- 
ters I wrote myself, and one day in August 
I received the following reply: 

“Dear Sir: 

“Your very kind letter, giving us the saddest news 
we ever received, that of the death of our very dear 
son, came to us three days ago. We received a let- 
ter from him dated July 4, nine days after he was 
wounded. He wrote very cheerfully and hopefully, 
but we feared that his wound was mortal. We think 
he was the noblest boy on earth. . . . 

“JPlease let us hear from you again.” 


PADRE 


161 


It is the old, old cry, “My boy, my son.” 
It is the cry of David in the chamber above 
the gate, “Oh, Absalom my son, would God 
that I had died for thee, my son Absalom.” 

Some of these letters from home are very 
pitiful. They come from the East and the 
West, the North and the South; they come 
blurred with falling tears and written in 
straggling lines that are tremulous with 
grief. Through them all runs that one quiv- 
ering note, “My son, my boy.” 

“Dear Sir: 

“The letter notifying me of the death of my son 
came yesterday, and while the news is dreadful to 
me yet we have these things to bear and ought to 
bear them as bravely as possible. I want to ask 
you for more information. Will you please tell me 
what my boy died with? As to how he was wounded 
and in what way he was operated on, and if the op- 
eration killed him or if he died of a wound received 
in battle. Will you please give me all the informa- 
tion that you can, simply that I may know all the 
facts relative to the death of my boy. By so doing 
you will confer a great favor on the mother of this 
boy who is gone,” 


162 


PADRE 


“Dear Sir: 

“I want to thank you for your kind attention to 
our darling boy. Did you think, when you talked 
with him, that he was going so soon? Tell me 
everything he said. Who was the nurse, and who 
stayed with him from midnight until he died? Mr. 
Prentice, I would gladly have given my life if that 
would have saved his. If he was my son, or is my 
son, he was a boy who hardly had his equal. We 
would be very glad if you would write us again and 
tell us all you know of our dear boy/* 

It is the old, old cry for comfort, and it 
has never been answered but once, by Him 
who said: “I am the Resurrection and the 
Life.” 

After the draft was extended so as to in- 
clude boys of eighteen years the wards be- 
came anxious for their younger brothers. 
In Ward 23 I talked with one boy whose 
elder brother is already over here, an offi- 
cer in the Field Artillery. The new law 
reached, and he feared would take, the last 
brother who was at home, a boy just eighteen 
years of age. This boy in Ward 23 said to 
me, “I could break down and cry when I 


PADRE 


168 


think of his going. It will break mother’s 
heart. If only I could do the fighting for 
him.” 

Up in the Officers’ Ward I found one 
Major whose eighteen-year-old son was ex- 
pecting a call to the colors. The tears came 
into his eyes and he turned his face away 
from me that I might not see, and here, too, 
it was the same cry, “If only I could do the 
fighting for him.” 

But let us turn to more cheerful scenes. 

I asked one colored man, who was pretty 
ill with pneumonia, if he would like me to 
have a word of prayer with him. He an- 
swered: “Ah don’ kno’ jus’ whut you-alls 
say, but if dat whut you say is gwine to do 
me any good, you-all’s de doctah, and whut 
you says goes!” 

I asked another colored man where he 
had enlisted. “ ’deedy, Boss,” he replied, 
“Ah ain’t ’listed; dey jus’ come an’ fotched 
me!” 

When the news of Bulgaria’s fall reached 


164 


PADRE 


us I went through the wards explaining how 
the elimination of Bulgaria must affect the 
Central Powers and told the boys that “the 
end of the War could only be a question of 
a very few weeks/’ At noon Captain Smed- 
ley came to mess with a laugh. He had been 
in the ward when I had visited it and had 
heard one boy who had only recently landed 
in France say to his neighbor, “Hell, I 
knew it! Never could keep a job more than 
three months in my life.” 


CHAPTER IX 


E VERY Saturday afternoon a priest 
came up to the Hospital to hear con- 
fession. ^hose who were able to 
walk met him in the small French-class room 
in the Hut, but once or twice a week he went 
through the wards to give the opportunity 
to every Catholic boy who was confined to 
his bed. 

At six o’clock on Sunday morning we sent 
a camion to bring the priest and the neces- 
sary equipment for the Altar up to the Rest 
Room, where he celebrated Mass. 

The Protestant Service was held at half 
past ten. At first we met in the Rest Room, 
with about fifteen in the congregation, but 
the attendance steadily increased so that we 
were compelled to move over to the Hut, 
where our congregations filled the room, 
165 


166 


PADRE 


with some four hundred attending every 
Sunday morning until the epidemic struck 
us and all public meetings were forbidden. 
Then we went back to the Rest Room, where 
a little group of nurses, the Red Cross, and 
a few convalescent officers made up the con-< 
gregation. 

Whenever I could find some one to play 
the portable organ I had brought over and 
some one to sing we would go through the 
wards on Sunday afternoon. After three 
or four selections had been sung the music 
would move on to the next ward, while I 
remained for a brief reading of the Scrip- 
ture, a prayer, and a little talk ten minutes 
long, by which time the organ and the singer 
would be ready to pass on and I would take 
their place. In this way we could cover 
seven wards in the afternoon. 

My Church had given me two communion 
sets, one with one hundred and thirty-six 
cups; the other was a small pocket set that 
I could carry with me into the wards. With 


PADRE 


167 


the larger set we held a communion service 
in the Hut once every month; with the 
smaller I administered the communion at 
the bedsides. One day, for instance, a note 
was left in my room saying that a boy in 
Ward 19 A wished the chaplain. I went di- 
rectly to his bed and he said, “I don’t sup- 
pose it would be possible for me to have the 
communion, would it?” I said, “Why not? 
We will have the communion for you here 
in five minutes.” 

Sometimes a boy about to enter the op- 
erating room would ask for the communion 
before going on the table. Several times I 
received boys into my own Church on Con- 
fession of Faith; they would then be dis- 
missed by the Nyack Reformed Church on 
a letter of dismission to the Church of their 
fathers. Occasionally I administered bap- 
tism before receiving these hoys in Church 
membership, but always we had a com- 
munion service for them. Not infrequently 
boys about to leave the Hospital would come 


168 


PADRE 


to my room asking me to pray with them and 
for them before they left. 

In addition to these public or private ser- 
vices there was a song service in the Hut 
every Sunday evening, led by Mr. Dana of 
the Y. M. C. A., when some speaker would 
be sent up from the Y. M. C. A. Headquar- 
ters to address the meeting. 

To our funerals we gave all possible for- 
mality, respect, and courtesy. The casket 
was carried in an ambulance. At the head 
of the procession marched the firing squad, 
eight men with a non-commissioned officer; 
ten feet to the rear came a soldier bearing a 
cross, the chaplain followed after another 
interval of ten feet, oftentimes accom- 
panied by an officer of the organization to 
which the dead had belonged, and finally the 
ambulance flanked by the escort of six men, 
three on each side. In that order we 
marched, often through rain and mud, to 
the cemetery over a mile distant. 

As we went the French peasants would 


PADRE 


169 


stop their work, uncover, and cross them- 
selves. Even children would halt their play 
for this little tribute of respect. French 
farmers driving into town would stop their 
wagons, rise in their seats, and uncover as 
the cortege passed them. Officers and sol- 
diers would stand and salute. The Ameri- 
cans were not always so precise in their 
courtesy, but as a rule men working on 
the road would come to attention, despatch 
riders on their motorcycles would stop and 
soldiers walking along the roads would line 
up, come to attention, and salute. 

When we arrived at the cemetery, the fir- 
ing squad marched to the grave and took 
position along the further side. The casket 
was then carried out, the squad presenting 
arms until the body was lowered, when the 
bearers came to attention at the foot of the 
grave. The chaplain then repeated the 
burial service, with the closing verses of the 
fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, the 
Twenty-third psalm, some verses from the 


170 


PADRE 


book of Revelations, the committal service, 
and the benediction. Then the sergeant 
took command, the three volleys were fired, 
the bugler sounded Taps, and the service was 
over. 

When the squads had marched away, I 
wrote the man’s name, organization, date of 
death, and the location of the grave on a 
stake, tied one of his identification discs to 
it, and then drove the stake into the ground 
at the head of the grave. A few days later 
this was replaced by a white cross and the 
mound was covered by growing plants. 
Often flowers were laid on the graves and 
wreaths were hung on the crosses. 

In September one of our ward orderlies 
died. 

It is hard for me to make you realize the 
feeling of restlessness that possessed the en- 
tire Hospital. These men, officers and pri- 
vates, had enlisted for a war, they had sailed 
with keen eagerness for the field of action, 
and now they found themselves stationed 


PADRE 


171 


in the Western seaboard of France, far re^ 
moved from the battle-line. From time to 
time they saw some officer or a surgical team 
transferred to the Front, with a little burn- 
ing of the heart that the call had not come 
to them. If volunteers had been asked for 
not an officer, nurse, or private would have 
been left to man the Hospital. So the first 
summer had passed; the autumn gave way to 
winter and winter to spring; another sum- 
mer had come and gone; the leaves were 
falling from the trees for the second time, 
and still these men remained at St. Nazaire 
while other units, which had sailed months 
after them, had landed at the port and en- 
trained for evacuation hospitals, field hos- 
pitals, or dressing stations where they longed 
to be. Yet day after day they went on 
throwing themselves into their work with a 
splendid whole-heartedness that quickened 
all my admiration. 

One boy expressed the feelings of the en- 


172 


PADRE 


tire corps in a poem whose first two lines 
are all that I recall : 

“Mother, take down your Service Flag, 

Your boy’s in St. Nazaire.” 

When this orderly died the commanding 
officer wished to make an especial ceremony 
of the funeral in order to impress the en- 
tire personnel with the feeling that he who 
died here, in the course of duty far behind 
the line, had played his part and was as 
worthy of a soldier’s burial as any man who 
fell in actual battle, and the Adjutant came 
to ask if I could not say something in my 
address that should help to deepen that im- 
pression. 

In the afternoon the casket was brought 
into the Hut for the service, which was at- 
tended by the Commanding Officer, a detail 
from the French Army, the Staff, and all 
the nurses and members of the personnel 
who could possibly be spared from the wards. 

I spoke of the service the hospitals had 


PADRE 


173 


performed in maintaining and uplifting the 
morale of the army at home and abroad; 
men going into action went with greater 
courage for the knowledge of the white beds 
which were waiting for the wounded and all 
the care they stood for and implied, while 
those at home could give their sons with 
quicker readiness because they, too, knew 
that no wounded man who could be reached 
would be neglected. 

We were often told that this war would 
be won by the nations which could pour in 
the last reserves, and in one year the hos- 
pitals of France had healed and returned 
one million men to the trenches! This is a 
vital work, of the first importance and one 
in which we have the right to feel a pride as 
well as a great responsibility. 

One paragraph of that brief address I 
wish to quote. I had taken my text from 
the 10th and 12th verses of the 17th chapter 
of Exodus: “And Hur went up to the top 


m 


PADRE 


of the hill . . . and stayed up the hand of 
Moses.” 

“It is easy to imagine with what keen re- 
sentment Hur obeyed the summons to leave 
the fighting line, to quit the place where 
armies were clashing, weapons flying, where 
men were fighting hand to hand that Israel 
might prove her worth and win the right to 
follow her appointed road. It could have 
been only with bitterness of heart that he 
looked down from the safe shelter of the 
summit of that hill to the battle on the plain 
below; or that he watched the sun set be- 
hind the jagged crests of great Gebel Ser- 
bal, ending a day whose story should be told 
to the children of the tribes throughout all 
ages, wherever a man of Israel should pitch 
his tent. There might have been some flush 
of shame on his cheeks as he made his way 
down that steep hillside, returning to the 
camp where the warriors of the day should 
tell and re-tell the tale, stories of great deeds, 
of bravery and heroism, while he could only 


PADRE 


175 


say that he had held up an old man’s hand. 
Yet the issues of the day had lain, not with 
the warriors but with Hur, for ‘While 
Moses’ arms were lifted Israel prevailed, but 
when they became heavy and he let them 
down, Amalek prevailed.’ 

“There came other days when Hur stood 
and fought with Israel, when he played with 
satisfaction what he deemed the manlier 
part, days whose achievements he preferred 
to tell. But when the Historian of Israel 
told the tale he found but one day in all 
the life of Hur that was great enough, sig- 
nificant enough to be recorded, and that was 
the day when he held up an old man’s arm 
until the going down of the sun and thereby 
determined the tide of victory. 

“We, too, are far removed from the bat- 
tle-line ; we stand where he cannot even hear 
the drumming of the guns ; we, too, are eager 
for the right to share the risks of war. But 
when the day ends, when the bugles sound 
the great ‘Recall,’ when we see in the clearer 


176 


PADRE 


light of retrospect, we shall understand bet- 
ter and measure more justly the part that 
we have played, if we play that part well, 
and we shall go home with pride for the 
things that we have done, for you are here 
transfusing your own life and strength into 
the men who are passing through our gates 
and going back to the fighting line. 

“The War can no more be won without 
your ambulances than it can be won without 
their artillery.” 

Then I spoke briefly of the dead, the part 
he had played up to the moment when his 
summons came, the work he had done for 
others ; and the service ended with a hymn, 
a prayer, and the benediction. 

After the services in the Hut were over 
we marched to the cemetery, where we held 
a soldier’s funeral, from the first order “Pre- 
sent Arms” to the melancholy call of 
“Taps.” 


CHAPTER X 


A BOUT the twentieth of September 
we began receiving influenza and 
pneumonia patients from the camps 
around St. Nazaire, until most of our wards 
were full. I And the following entries in 
my diary: 

Sept. 22d. Torrential rain; rumors of cholera 
at Brest, which is quarantined. We have lots of 
pneumonia here, mostly among the negroes. 

Sept. 24th. Fifty patients admitted after seven 
o’clock this evening, almost all influenza or pneu- 
monia cases. 

Sept. 25th. This is to be made a pneumonia hos- 
pital, with no more hospital trains from the Front, 
at least for the present. Thirty-six cases of influ- 
enza received to-night. About half our patients now 
are colored, and the number constantly increases. 

Sept. 26th. Administered the Communion to four 
in the pneumonia ward. 

Sept. 27th. Eight deaths to-day. All wards ex- 

177 


178 


PADRE 


cept 11, 12 and 13 are open and in use. Called out 
from supper to visit a colored man in one of the 
pneumonia wards, but found him unconscious. Later 
in the evening I met the stretcher bearers carrying 
him to the Morgue. 

Sept. 28th. Ten funerals to-day and drenching 
rain. 

Sept. 29th. We have three wards filled with pneu- 
monia cases and more coming in every day. Grippe 
and influenza fill the other wards. The influenza 
and pneumonia are of a virulent type. 

Sept. 30th. Nearly fifty medical cases admitted 
to-day, mostly pneumonia and influenza. Four 
deaths during the night. Ward 2 has been emptied 
and turned into a pneumonia ward, making the 
fourth given over to this disease. In these wards 
several are dying. 

Oct. 1st. Four more deaths. Cannot get coffins 
fast enough from the French carpenters who have 
been supplying us, and the American Quartermaster’s 
Department has taken over this work. 

On or about the third or fourth of October 
we received orders to evacuate every patient 
who could be moved and prepare to receive 
patients from a convoy that was sailing for 
St. Nazaire. On the fifth and sixth we sent 


PADRE 


179 


out 750 patients, leaving, if I remember 
rightly, about 250 in the Hospital. 

On the evening of the sixth, when I had 
finished my last round of the wards and 
Taps had sounded, I was walking up and 
down the road which encircled the Officers’ 
Shack when there came to me, faint in the 
distance, the familiar sound of cheering 
which I had first heard as we sailed up the 
Mersey to our landing place in Liverpool. 
I knew then that the convoy was coming 
in and the French of the city were greeting 
it. I did not know until later the trying ex- 
periences through which those on board had 
passed. 

One vessel had lost, I was told, three hun- 
dred and fifty men from pneumonia or in- 
fluenza. One boy said that for days they 
saw the flag on board this ship half-masted 
every few minutes; then something white 
would shoot over the side and vanish in the 
sea. Others told me that on board their ship 
they lay in their quarters three bunks deep 


180 


PADRE 


and six across, with a narrow passage in the 
center, and that at night no lights at all, not 
even pocket searchlights, were permitted on 
their deck, even though they lay below the 
water-line. There were no nurses, few doc- 
tors, and for days they had difficulty even 
in getting water. When at last they 
sighted land and entered the harbor of St. 
Nazaire there were some fifty caskets on the 
poop-deck with, I think, twenty bodies 
wrapped in sheets and covered by tarpaulins 
for whom no coffins could be supplied. 

With what a contrast the cheers of wel- 
come must have come to these who had sailed 
with death or to those of the aft guard who 
kept their watch beside the bodies of the 
dead! 

Within twelve hours the numbers in our 
hospital had leaped up to nearly thirteen 
hundred patients, and throughout the even- 
ing of October seventh I was going from bed 
to bed, sometimes with a word of encourage- 


PADRE 


181 


ment or a prayer, again with stimulants or 
water. 

The next two weeks were a constant night- 
mare. I saw nothing worse when I was with 
an evacuation hospital close to the lines, and 
those of the Staff who had been at the Front) 
felt the horror of it quite as much as I. On 
one day we had sixty-four deaths. There 
were six hundred men digging graves in the 
cemetery, and they could not dig them fast 
enough. At one time I should estimate the 
number of coffins sent down from the va- 
rious camps and hospitals at four hundred, 
awaiting burial. 

Tuesday morning, October eighth, I went 
down to the cemetery with twenty caskets, 
but as there were no graves ready, I had 
them stacked up, and borrowed two tar- 
paulins to cover and protect them from the 
rain. An army chaplain was presently sta- 
tioned at the cemetery who conducted a brief 
service over each body as a grave was pre- 
pared for it. These bodies were interred 


182 


PADRE 


in groups of about twenty at a time. Let 
me quote from my diary: 

“Oct. 8th. I enlisted four Y.M.C.A. men to-day 
to help in the wards. All the corridors are occu- 
pied. One boy came to see his brother, but he had 
died this morning. Have just received a telegram 
ordering me to report immediately at Paris. This 
means a transfer to the Front, but this Hospital has 
become 'the Front just now, and I do not feel that I 
can leave. I showed the telegram to the C.O. and 
he has telegraphed Paris saying that a chaplain is 
urgently needed here, and asking to retain me at 
least until my successor arrives. 

“Oct. 9th. Thirty-four deaths between seven 
o’clock last evening and breakfast this morning. 
Within five minutes last night three white-sheeted 
bodies were carried past me on their way to the 
Morgue. This building is inadequate, so the Prop- 
erty Room has been taken over as an annex. At 
noon to-day there were thirty bodies laid out in rows 
here, with tags on each giving their names and or- 
ganizations. I have Y.M.C.A. men working in the 
wards, two of them clergymen, so I have been able 
to give up the day to the care of the dead. The cof- 
fins are being forwarded from the Hospital as rap- 
idly as possible, lest we have sickness here, but they 
cannot bury them at the cemetery, so our dead are 


PADRE 


183 


being stacked under tarpaulins. Each box I have 
had marked in white paint, giving the man’s name, 
organization, and date of death with his identifica- 
tion number. The wards are ghastly, constant 
groaning, cries of delirium, patients getting out of 
bed. Many come in here with normal temperatures 
and thin, reedy pulses. I have been writing a num- 
ber of letters for these boys, and the letters are of 
the same character, whether they come from officers 
or men. This is a type: 

" T am feeling fine. France is a great country; 
things are beautiful over here. Will write more when 
I get settled. Kiss little sister for me/ 

“The senders of many of these letters might be 
dead by night, and the next letter home would come 
in a stranger’s hand. One officer after dictating such 
a letter said, ‘It hurts to lie like that/ I stopped 
and talked with him for a few minutes, reciting some 
of the comforting, strength-giving verses of the 
Bible, and then we had a prayer. He said, ‘That is 
beautiful. I have kept praying to God.’ So many 
of these fellows will draw their hands, slowly and 
weakly, from beneath the covers to take my hand 
and thank me after I have prayed with them. A 
telegram has come from Paris, ‘By all means keep 
Prentice for the present/ We have telegraphed for 
another chaplain, as the Roman Catholic who arrived 
the other day is sick and in bed. I have been work- 


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ing all day and until late at night. The Red Cross 
women, Mrs. De Forest, Miss White, with some that 
have been lent us from Headquarters down town 
and Miss Gordon of the Y.W.C.A., have been work- 
ing like Trojans. 

“Twenty-two died last night. When I get to bed 
I can hear them coughing in all the wards around 
me. I have been through all the wards offering 
prayer with these boys and repeatedly I am stopped 
by men who call to me, ‘Won’t you come and talk 
to me?’ They simply hang on to you with their eyes 
as you pass down the ward — you can feel them cling. 
When I have finished reciting the comfort and prom- 
ise of the Bible verses to them they will stretch out 
their hands to take mine, and they always thank me. 
One colored man kept repeating, ‘Sure, sure,’ every 
time I stopped to take breath, but he was very devout 
and very much in earnest and, as he said it, it sounded 
like an ‘Amen.* ** 

Even in the midst of scenes like these, the 
wards were eager for news. I find this 
entry in my diary for October thirteenth. 

“A bright, clear, cool day. Went first to the 
wards with the Phare . These boys are pretty sick; 
they are still dying rapidly, but even the dying will 
turn to hear, while those who are stronger rise up on 


PADRE 


185 


their elbows to try to see as well as listen. I told 
them that Germany, Austria, and Turkey had pro- 
fessed their readiness to accept all of Wilson’s con- 
ditions of peace, and that, to whet their desire for 
peace, the Allies had won smashing victories all along 
the line, from the Channel to the Plains of Esdraelon. 
I gave them a list of towns, cities, and villages cap- 
tured, of prisoners surrendered and guns abandoned 
by the enemy. I told them that everywhere. East 
and West, the German lines were breaking and the 
allied lines advancing. ‘Bulgaria has quit, Ger- 
many, Austria and Turkey are trying to quit, and a 
perfectly good war is going to smash/ 

“It was great to see their eyes brighten. Even 
the faces of the dying lit up, while hands that were 
almost too weak to move crept slowly out and tried 
to clap. I shall never forget it.” 

As I left the ward I passed an elderly 
French woman, one of many who came up 
each day to clean the floors and windows. 
She had buried her face on the nurse’s shoul- 
der and was crying quietly, while the nurse 
was gently patting her on the back. She 
had lost four sons, one after the other, on 
the battle-fields of France. Whatever peace 


186 


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might bring to others, it came with empty 
hands to her. 

One day I went down to the cemetery 
with about twenty bodies which I hoped to 
be able to inter. There were no graves 
ready, so I could only stack them up with 
the others. While I was standing there, a 
boy in khaki came up to me, asking when I 
expected to be able to bury these dead. I 
told him that I hoped to do it at noon of 
the following day, but why had he asked 
the question? He told me, and his voice 
broke a little, that his brother was some- 
where in that pile over which the tarpaulins 
were being drawn. He had crossed the seas 
with him, not knowing that he was coming 
only to stand beside his grave. The words 
of the Lament of Catullus came back to me : 

“Multas per gentes et multa per aequora evectus, 

Advenio has miseras, Frater, ad inferias.” 

I do not know who wrote the following 
translation, but it is worth remembering: 


PADRE 187 

“Brother, through many lands, o’er many waters borne, 
I reach thy grave, death’s last sad rites to pay; 
Thy funeral ashes in the grave to call and mourn 
That ruthless Fate has hurried thee away. 

Woe’s me! Yet now I lie, all drenched with tears 
For thee, thee loved so well. 

What gifts our fathers gave the honored clay, 

Take them, my grief they tell. 

And now forever Hail; forever Fare thee well.” 


Another boy, more fortunate, was borne 
by five of his classmates who had crossed the 
seas with him, coming from the same west- 
ern American town. I wrote down their 
names that I might send them to his mother. 

Despite all the rush and pressure of these 
days, I am glad to recall the fact that there 
was no failure to identify the dead. This 
was no small achievement, for many of these 
men came to us from the convoy without 
identification tags; one man wore two, each 
with a different name; not a few of them 
were moribund when they reached the Hos- 
pital, and some became delirious shortly 


188 


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after entering and could not answer ques- 
tions. 

Orders were posted for the ward physi- 
cians to inspect their patients and see that 
every man wore an identification tag. 
Where these were missing, tags were sup- 
plied and tied about the ankles. 

One morning an orderly came to tell me 
that there was an unidentified body in the 
Morgue. The tag had either come untied 
or had been dislodged as the patient tossed 
in his bed. He had been brought in during 
the night, and there was no way to tell at 
what hour or from what ward. No one 
knew who he was, and a tour of the wards 
added nothing to our information. 

That night, however, when the various 
lists were handed in, we felt sure that we had 
identified the body. Each ward kept a rec- 
ord of the men who had died there in the 
past twenty-four hours, while the corporal 
in charge of the Morgue kept a list of those 
who were brought to him. In the evening 


PADRE 


189 


we knew that “John Smith” had died, for 
his name appeared on one of the ward-lists, 
but was missing from the record of the 
Morgue, which had instead one entry, “un- 
identified.” As this was the only case in 
which the two lists failed to agree, we had 
moral proof of identification. But this was 
hardly legal proof, so, to complete the evi- 
dence, we brought up a photographer and 
after various measurements had been taken 
we secured three photographs, one full face 
and a profile from each side. From Base 
Headquarters I learned that the organiza- 
tion to which the dead man had belonged was 
still in camp on the outskirts of the city, so I 
took a car and went out to consult with the 
officers of his company. They called the 
men who knew “John Smith” best, the cor- 
poral of his squad, his bunk-mate, and a 
friend. Each of these three, being ques- 
tioned separately, said without hesitation 
that the photographs were of “John Smith,” 
I then took their depositions, filed these with 


190 


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the photographs at Hospital Headquarters, 
and the next day we buried “John Smith” 
and raised a cross above his grave. 

As my work with Base Hospital 101 was 
drawing to its close, I had a photograph, 
taken of this cemetery and wrote the follow- 
ing letter to the parents and families of the 
boys who had died in this Hospital during 
my chaplaincy: 

Base Hospital 101, 
American E. F. 

To the Fathers , Mothers, Wives , and Families of the 
soldiers who have died in this Hospital: 

My dear 

You already know that your (son, brother, hus- 
band), A. B., has given his life in the service of his 
country and for the sake of all that made life pos- 
sible for the men, women, and children of our gen- 
eration and for those of the generations that shall 
follow us. His grave is No. — , in Plot — of the 
cemetery whose photograph is enclosed. 

I wish that I could write to you even more directly 
and individually than through this printed letter. I 
cannot do so without taking too much time from the 
other boys who are now occupying the thirty wards 
of this Hospital. 


PADRE 


191 


I can only say that I know you all by name, for 
your own sons have often spoken to me of their 
homes and of you, and I am asking you to help me 
make this letter direct and personal to you. 

Some of your boys have come to us from the front 
line trenches where they have seen the actual fight- 
ing, where they have been wounded, and they have 
died of the wounds received in battle. To them and 
to those who sent them we owe the peace that is so 
near at hand. 

Some of your boys have never seen the Front. 
Their work lay here, and they have died either from 
accident or from disease. Yet the work they did 
was just as essential, just as vital as that of any 
soldier at the Front, and the risks they ran were 
oftentimes no less. To them as truly do we owe the 
peace that is coming now. 

Some of them sailed away from America and 
landed only to die as they reached the shore. They 
are buried within sight of the sea over which they 
sailed. They were privileged neither to work nor 
to fight in France. Yet none the less they played 
their part, for the knowledge that they were com- 
ing, that they were coming every day, thousands 
upon thousands of them, broke the will of Germany, 
robbed her of her courage and took the strength from 
her arms. 

These boys who never saw the Front fought deep 


192 


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within Germany herself* in her homes* in the streets 
of her cities and in her camps. By the mere fact 
of their coming they broke the morale of the Ger- 
man army and of the German people* and we owe 
our victory no less to them than to those who died 
upon the battle-field. 

It may comfort you to know that they lacked for 
nothing. I have seen doctors working over your 
boys who were sick themselves and should have been 
in bed. I have seen nurses whose faces were flushed 
with fever still on duty in their wards. I have seen 
the wardmasters work for twelve hours at a stretch 
and then go on for another twelve hours of service 
to your boys. Everything that the Red Cross* the 
Y.M.C.A.* or the Y.W.C.A. could do* has been done. 

Not a boy has died in this Hospital without the 
service of his Church* without hearing the promise 
of that God who said: 

‘Tear not* for I have redeemed thee; I have called 
thee by thy name* thou art Mine. When thou pass- 
est through the waters I will be with thee* and 
through the rivers they shall not overflow thee; when 
thou passest through the fire thou shalt not be burned* 
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee* for I am the 
Holy One of Israel* thy Saviour.** 

Your boy gave himself for the things for which 
God cares. He died that truth* justice, honor and 
mercy might not perish from this earth. He who 


PADRE 


193 


fights for the things for which God also cares and 
strives rests beneath the shadow and protection of 
the Everlasting Wings. 

Your boys are resting in a government cemetery, 
beneath white crosses that bear their names, under 
mounds that are covered with wreaths and growing 
flowers. Here, having fought their fight, they lie 
with their faces turned towards their homes and you. 

America will not forget them, nor the homes that 
sent them forth. 


CHAPTER XI 


T HE men who died during this epi- 
demic were buried with brief religious 
services, but not with the ceremonies 
we had been able to give to those who had 
died in less burdened times. I felt unwill- 
ing to leave St. Nazaire without a memorial 
service for these dead. 

We had two such services, one informal 
and the other with all the dignity we could 
give to it. 

One Sunday morning after church was 
out, a little group of Red Cross and 
Y.M.C.A. representatives went to the ceme- 
tery, where we found Major Daniels, rep- 
resenting the U.S.A. Base Headquarters, 
and a few other officers; together we held 
a brief service over the new made graves. 

On the afternoon of October twentv- 
194 


PADKE 


195 


seventh, a cool, crisp, cloudless day, we held 
our second memorial service, one that I 
think those who were present will not forget. 

It was not only the Staff of the Hospital, 
the troops stationed there, and the nurses 
who attended, but very many of the Red 
Cross workers in the entire district, members 
of the Y.M.C.A. from the city and the 
camps around it, officers representing the 
French army, the Commandant of the 
French Naval Station with his Staff, the 
Mayor and city officials of St. Nazaire, 
these also came to join with us in this ex- 
pression of respect. 

With two ambulances carrying the bodies 
of four boys who had died the day before, 
we marched in silence until the Hospital was 
out of sight and hearing, when the band be- 
gan the solemn funeral march. So we 
passed slowly on, through a street suddenly 
grown silent except for the music of the 
dirge. All traffic halted; soldiers and civil- 
ians came to attention and saluted, each ac- 


196 


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cording to his own custom; peasants working 
in their gardens straightened up and stood 
uncovered. 

Entering the gates of the cemetery, we 
formed a hollow square with the represen- 
tatives of the French Army, Navy, and the 
City on one side, together with about a 
thousand civilians. Facing these w T ere the 
Staff, nurses, and personnel of the Hos- 
pital. The remaining sides were formed by 
the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A. respec- 
tively, while the band and the chaplain were 
in the center. 

The band played, and the square, led by 
the Y.M.C.A., sang “Nearer, My God, to 
Thee,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” and, after the 
services, “America.” 

The Memorial Address may, perhaps, 
bear repeating: 

An officer told me recently that when he came to 
St. Nazaire there were only eleven graves in this 
cemetery. 

In the year that has passed since he arrived these 


PADRE 


197 


graves have multiplied until they have become legion. 
The ranks have become companies, and the companies 
regiments. Not only here, but all over France these 
graves have increased so, their white crosses rise in 
such myriads, that they seem to be armies marching 
towards the East. 

And it is not without significance that, while these 
silent ranks have been forming and steadily creeping 
eastward, the Prussian line has been straining, crack- 
ing, breaking, and retreating towards the Rhine. 

Do you realize that of all the kings who sat upon 
the thrones of the Central Powers and their allies 
when the War began only one remains ? Constantine 
is gone; Ferdinand is fallen; the Sultan is dead and 
another occupies his place; the old Emperor of Aus- 
tria is gone and a new sovereign sits upon his tottering 
throne. Only William the Second remains — for 
just a little while. 

^But the head of every Government allied against 
Germany still lives and rules. There is the same 
President in the United States, the same President 
in France, the same kings in England, Belgium, 
Italy, Serbia, who were in power in 1914. 

And it is just because these graves have been mul- 
tiplying and spreading eastward that the Prussian 
line is breaking; it is the pressure of these graves 
that has cast down thrones. 

Have you ever thought how easily these white 


198 


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crosses, standing about us here, could be transformed 
into stars? Just add one more arm to the Cross, 
and revolve these arms a little and the four-armed 
Cross becomes the five-pointed Star. For every boy 
in service over here there is a star on a Service 
Flag back home. These stars are flying from our 
Churches, from our factories, banks, and city halls; 
thousands of stars, millions of them; they are like 
the stars of the night for multitude. 

And like those stars, they are not changeless. 
Look into the sky above on some clear evening and 
you will see that some of the stars of night are 
white, some are red, and some are blue. The white 
stars turn to red, and the red to blue. So the stars 
on our Service Flags are changing. The blue star 
stands for a boy in service; watch and sometimes you 
will see the blue star turn to red; that means that 
the boy for whom it stands is sick or wounded; some- 
times the star, whether it be blue or red, will turn 
suddenly to gold, and every cross in this cemetery 
is represented by a gold star on some service flag 
back home. 

It is now four years since Germany threw down 
her challenge to the world and sent her armies over 
the frontiers of Belgium, Luxemburg, and France. 
Those armies were not apostles of an idea; they 
represented only Force, Frightfulness, Crime and 
Cruelty. 


PADRE 


199 


Against these armies France and England, all un- 
prepared, set up their banners of Justice, Right, and 
Reason. 

I know of no braver deed in all history, no more 
sublime act of faith. Messieurs (turning to the rep- 
resentatives of France) than that which France dis- 
played when she took up the gauntlet Germany had 
cast across her violated frontiers. 

She knew that she was utterly unprepared; she 
had no positive assurance that England would in- 
tervene, and even if she did it would be long months 
before Great Britain could act effectively upon the 
Continent. 

She knew that Russia would need two full months 
for the mobilization of her forces, and that for 
those two months France would have to bear alone 
the full weight of armies that far outmatched her 
own in every element of material strength. 

Yet how well she bore her burden the Battle of 
the Marne witnesses and reveals. 

America cannot forget nor soon repay the debt 
she owes to England and to France for their faith 
and courage in nineteen hundred and fourteen. 

It is nothing new for which these fought who 
lie about us here. Long centuries ago the Law went 
out from Sinai, 

“Thou shalt not covet.” 

“Thou shalt not steal.” 


PADRE 


200 

“Thou shalt not kill.” 

Which of these Laws has Germany not broken? 
It was for the preservation of these eternal princi- 
ples of right that these have died. 

Centuries ago the prophet cried aloud over the 
cities of Israel: “Let Justice run down like rivers, 
and Righteousness like mighty streams/’ 

Centuries ago the Apostle said from Salonika: 
“Let no man defraud his brother; him will God 
avenge.” It was for the security and maintenance 
of these enduring laws that these have suffered and 
died. 

We are all weary of this war, tired and longing 
for our homes, yet something holds us here. If 
you should invert this white cross, and curve the 
arms a little, the cross would become an anchor. 
And in very truth these graves anchor us here. We 
cannot go and we will not go until everything for 
which these boys laid down their lives shall have 
been achieved. We will not suffer that, by any fail- 
ure or weak yielding on our part, one gold star back 
home shall be dimmed or turned to black! 

I am told that when our boys went forth to halt, 
at Chateau-Thierry, the German rush on Paris their 
orders were simply, “You will go here and hold,” 
“You will go there and hold.” Nothing was said 
as to what they should do if they were outmatched 
and outnumbered; no provision was made for fail- 


PADRE 


201 


ure. The orders were simply “Go and HOLD !” 

And up from these graves there comes an impera- 
tive command, a command far more imperative than 
any human lips could frame, “You will stay and 
hold” 

An English officer, killed in a recent action, said 
to those who caught him as he fell — and these were 
his last words: 

“The command is forward; see that the boys go 
through.” 

“The command is Forward, let this call 
Reecho through the fields of France; 

From Base Port to the final wall 
That stands before our next advance. 

O’er land and sea, on plain and hill 
Send this lone challenge to the Hun 
Until the closing gun is still 
Until the final task is done. 

“The command is Forward; send it on 
From Post to Post along the line 
Until against some glowing dawn 
Our vanguard swings across the Rhine; 

Until around the Prussian throne 
The closing web of steel is cast, 

Until where Right has reached its own 
The German flag is furled at last.” 


202 


PADRE 


“The command is Forward!” and forward we will 
go. We will not falter and we will not fail. This 
much we owe to the dead who lie about us here; this 
much we owe to the homes that sent them forth. 
And what we owe, we pay! 

After the address came a brief prayer and 
then the Committal Service. The Repre- 
sentatives of France laid a wreath upon the 
graves ; three volleys were fired by the firing 
squad. Taps was sounded, the clear notes 
lingering for a moment in the air, and the 
procession marched out from the cemetery. 

This Memorial Service practically ended 
my work with Base Hospital 101, for the 
chaplain who was to succeed me had arrived 
and two days later I left St. Nazaire for 
Paris, where I had been ordered to report 
three weeks before. Before I close this 
chapter I want to say a word of apprecia- 
tion of the cooperation and encouragement 
I received from the Staff at Base 101. I 
made no request that was not promptly 


PADRE 


203 


granted and every possible help in my work 
was given me. 

Throughout the entire personnel there 
was an esprit de corps, a pride in the organi- 
zation that was a most valuable asset and 
for which the Hospital was largely indebted 
to wise leadership, first under Colonel 
Bowen and later under Major Meister who 
succeeded him. 

The members of the Staff were keenly 
interested in their wards and gave the best 
they had to their boys. 

The nurses, not only in this hospital, but 
wherever I came in contact with them, 
measured up splendidly to their tasks. I 
know of no other organization in the army 
that outranked them in self-forgetfulness or 
devotion to duty. The entire Hospital at 
St. Nazaire, from the noon conference of 
the Staff to the midnight supper for the 
nurses on night duty, in its care for the liv- 
ing and respect for the dead, in the effective 
cooperation of all its members and its 


204 


PADRE 


pleasant fellowship, remains a memory that 
will not soon be dimmed. 

I also want to say a word of commenda- 
tion for the boys themselves. I came home 
with a very great admiration for these sick 
and wounded men. I rarely heard a boy 
groan or utter a sound when he was in pain. 
I have seen their lips quiver and their hands 
clench, but what they had to bear they bore 
in silence. Even in the painful dressing of 
their wounds they still kept the gateway of 
their lips. It was only when a boy was 
coming out from the anaesthetic, was deliri- 
ous or asleep that you would be apt to hear 
any expression of pain, and the entire ward 
took a pride in its reputation. If you en- 
tered a ward and found some boy crying 
out, you would be promptly informed, be- 
fore you had taken many steps, that the 
patient in Bed 17 was just coming out from 
the ether; that was why he was crying out. 
This was also true at Auteuil ; at Commercy 
their courage at least was no less. 


PADRE 


205 

If you asked any boy in the ward how he 
was coming on, he would be sure to tell you 
that he was coming on fine, better to-day, 
and the pain was not so bad. Sometimes, 
in the pneumonia wards, the patient could 
hardly find the breath to tell you how fine 
he was, and oftentimes he would be dead by 
night ; and they died in the same quiet, self- 
effacing way, as if unwilling to disturb or 
interrupt the rest of the ward. 

When they were lying on stretchers at 
the operating room door, awaiting their 
turn they would be bright, cheerful, ready 
for a chat on any subject and full of chaff 
for one another. I have gone with boys 
when minor operations were being per- 
formed in the anaesthetizing room and the 
ether had to be given on the operating table 
itself. Yet sometimes there would be an 
operation under way on the other table; 
bloodstains and blood-soaked cloths would 
be lying on the floor ; the scent of ether was 
in the air. The stertorous breathing of the 


206 


PADRE 


patient, the knives and instruments spread 
out ready for the surgeon’s hand, the white 
robes of the surgeons and nurses, now not 
altogether white, all this made up a scene 
that would test the courage of any man. 
Yet these boys would step briskly up to the 
table, give one swift glance around the room, 
and then lie down as quietly as if they were 
in their own bed. You could not go with 
them without a great admiration for their 
spirit and courage. 

And they were so appreciative of every- 
thing you did for them. They never failed 
to thank you when you left them or welcome 
you when you came. 


CHAPTER XII 


I LEFT St. Nazaire on a night train, 
reaching Paris at eight o’clock the 
next morning. 

Traveling in France during the war was 
not without its drawbacks. Journeys were 
arduous, not only because dining cars were 
rare and sleeping cars an expensive luxury 
(after my attack of influenza I paid nearly 
twenty-five dollars for a berth from Cannes 
to Paris, a ride of seventeen hours) but also 
because many trains had been discontinued 
and those which ran were usually late and 
always crowded, with passengers standing in 
the aisles by day and sleeping along the cor- 
ridors by night. The railroads were so con- 
gested by the troops, ammunition, and sup- 
plies needed at the Front that they had 
neither trains nor tracks for non-essential 
207 


208 


PADRE 


traffic. The transportation of a million 
shells required many hundreds of cars; yet 
in a time of heavy action the guns of one 
sector might exhaust that supply in the 
course of a single hour. 

Under such circumstances it was natural 
that mere passenger traffic should be offi- 
cially discouraged, and that no one was al- 
lowed to move from one place to another 
without presenting both a valid reason and 
an official authorization for his journey. 

Before leaving St. Nazaire I was re- 
quired to present to the authorities at the 
depot : 

First, a leave of absence from the Com- 
manding officer at the Hospital. 
Second, a similar permit from Major De 
Forest, the Manager of the Red Cross 
Western Zone. 

Third, an ordre de mission from the Provost 
Marshal’s office ; this document gave my 
name and official position, the number of 


PADRE 


209 


my identification card, the place of de- 
parture and destination, the purpose of 
my trip, the mode of travel, and the date 
which limited the validity of the permis- 
sion. 

Fourth, a card, also from the office of the 
Provost Marshal, to be presented on 
leaving the depot in Paris. 

With my pocket book beginning to bulge 
with official papers, I went to the railroad 
ticket office, where I secured my transporta- 
tion and reserved my seat on the train. 

On arriving in Paris the next morning I 
called a porter, here, as usual, a woman who 
had been called into this service to release 
a man for the front. 

Taxis in Paris were few and very hard to 
secure. When one drove up to the station 
it would be promptly stormed by a dozen 
at a time who ran out and climbed up on 
the running board as the machine swung 
around the circle before driving up to the 


210 


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platform. I mounted guard over my bags 
and sent the porter a block or so down the 
street, where she intercepted a taxi en route 
for the depot, jumped on board, and then 
fought off claimants until she could steer 
the cab to the spot where I was waiting. 

On this day it was an hour after my ar- 
rival in Paris before I was able to leave the 
depot, and it was half past nine when I had 
deposited my belongings and sat down for 
breakfast. As no hotel or restaurant in the 
city could serve coffee after half past nine 
I had part of my breakfast at the Hotel 
Continental and went to the University 
Union for my coffee. 

At the Red Cross Headquarters that 
morning they showed me a large map of 
the Western Front, on which the locations of 
all hospitals were indicated by colored pins. 
As several of these were without chaplains 
and there was an opportunity to pick and 
choose among them, I pressed for an ap- 
pointment to Evacuation Hospital 13, for 


PADRE 


211 


the blue-headed pin representing it stood 
much nearer to the front line than that of 
any other hospital which was available. 
Paris Headquarters, however, were not cer- 
tain as to the present or precise location of 
this Hospital, so they sent me to Neuf- 
chateau, where they thought I would be able 
to locate it definitely. 

I reached Neuf chateau late in the after- 
noon of November first and went directly to 
the Lafayette Club for dinner. 

This Club is unique; you paid not for 
what you got, but for being what you were. 
Lieutenants, captains, and fortunately chap- 
lains paid a minimum price; majors and 
lieutenant-colonels paid more ; colonels were 
in a class by themselves and took their check 
books when they dined at the Club. Gen- 
erals of all grades, so I was told, sat on the 
horse block outside scowling at their juniors 
as they passed in. Once or twice a month 
the man with a star on his collar saved up 
enough to dine at the Club. I repeat, this 


PADRE 


212 

is what I was told, although I doubt the 
story. Nevertheless, it is true that there 
were no generals dining at the Club while I 
was there. I am sorry for them, since the 
table was excellent. 

Neufchateau was always full to overflow- 
ing, and you had no reason to expect a room 
at any hotel unless you had reserved it in 
advance. When either one of the two hotels 
had booked all its rooms the doors were 
locked and you had to shout your name 
through the key-hole, telling the proprietor 
that you were one for whom a room was be- 
ing held. Then came a long wait while your 
claim was being carefully investigated. If 
your statement was verified the door would 
be opened, swiftly closed, and locked again. 

Red Cross Headquarters at Neufchateau 
was by no means sure where Evacuation 13 
was at the moment, but they advised me to 
go to Toul and take a camion thence to 
Commercy; they thought I might find the 
Hospital there. 


PADRE 


213 


The next train for Toul left at half past 
six that evening, so I was given an early 
dinner at the Club and then stumbled 
through the darkness and slipped through 
the mud to the depot. Neuf chateau was 
fairly near the front and exposed to air raids 
at any time, wherefor there were no lights, 
either in the streets or from the windows of 
the houses; even the automobiles were usu- 
ally dark. The residents picked their way 
through the streets by the aid of pocket 
searchlights, the flashes vanishing, appear- 
ing, and vanishing again, giving the illusion 
of huge fire-flies wandering around the 
town. 

My train was an hour and three quarters 
late. 

I doubt if there are many more austere or 
cheerless places than the depots of France, 
where there are no warm, comfortable wait- 
ing rooms and only the dimmest of lights. 
It was too cold to sit down inside, too wet 
and dark to stroll about outside. So I 


214 


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paced the platform until after eight o’clock, 
when my train pulled in, and lost another 
half hour resting at the station. 

Toul is only forty miles away, but it took 
us four hours to cover that distance. As we 
pulled out, the lights, which had been lit as 
the train entered the depot, were extin- 
guished, and we rode in complete darkness. 
This train had been bombed the week before 
and all movements, whether of troops or 
of trains, were made at night. 

We crept along, slowed down, stopped, 
and then rumbled on again. We passed 
through the shadows of dark and silent vil- 
lages and halted amid woods. Whenever 
we stopped no power on earth could move 
us except that silly little pocket whistle of 
Monsieur le Conducteur. A friend of mine 
wrote me that the conductor on her train had 
lost his whistle, so there the train stood while 
he dashed madly through the corridors, 
around the platform, and under the cars, 
the American boys on the train, meanwhile, 


PADRE 


215 


sticking their heads out of the windows as 
he raced by, to ask: “What was eatin’ the 
bloomin’ old train, anyhow?” 

It was well after midnight when we pulled 
into Toul. This city also had been bombed 
the week before, so I walked through the 
darkness to the Red Cross Rest House, 
where a bed had been reserved for me. 
When the door opened I was met by a 
cheery burst of lights that dazzled the eyes. 
The hall led into a pleasant sitting room, 
where a wood fire was blazing on the hearth. 
There were reading lights on the tables, with 
writing paper, books, and magazines. Best 
of all, however, was a huge hamper of 
doughnuts under the kitchen table, glimpsed 
through the half open door, with only a 
sleepy cat on guard. I asked the private who 
had been detailed to act as host who had left 
those doughnuts there without even a ma- 
chine-gun squad to protect them, and he 
replied, “I donno”; then a moment later he 


216 


PADRE 


added, “Well, why doncher go ahead? I 
ain’t lookin’.” 

I went. 

After breakfast the next morning I called 
at Red Cross Headquarters to secure a 
camion for the trip to Commercy. As the 
camion would not be available until the 
afternoon I spent some hours wandering 
around the old town and in a visit to the 
cathedral, where the priests were celebrating 
a memorial mass for the American dead. 
The verger told me that at eleven o’clock 
there would be another mass for the French 
who had fallen in battle. 

The road from Toul to Commercy first 
climbed the encircling hills and then followed 
a wide, green valley where a surprising 
number of cattle were grazing in the fields. 
We passed groups of Russian soldiers loaf- 
ing along the road and then their encamp- 
ment, which was being encircled with a wire 
fence. 

We went through a succession of queer 


PADRE 


217 


and decidedly unsanitary towns, in some of 
which the stables flanked the dwellings, be- 
ing under the same roof, so that you could 
'only distinguish the residences of the inhabi- 
tants from those of their cattle by the piles 
of manure that lay in front of certain doors. 
We crossed and recrossed the canal, with 
its straight rows of trees on either bank ; we 
climbed a succession of hills slowly and 
tobogganed furiously down each one when 
we turned the crest. 

On the top of one long rise we found ten 
or twelve French hangars, well hidden in 
a wood, with only their entrances project- 
ing from the shelter of the trees at either 
end, every hangar painted in faded green 
and gold. These were all empty, but sev- 
eral machines were visible high overhead, 
whether from these hangars or not I do not 
know. 

Red Cross Headquarters at Neuf chateau 
had been right; Evacuation 13 was located 
at Commercy, but they were within twenty- 


PADRE 


218 

four hours of being wrong, for the Hospital 
had arrived on Saturday afternoon, and I 
reached the town on Sunday. 

The Unit was occupying the Oudinot 
Barracks, the wards being placed in four 
out of six long, dreary, dismal, gray-stone 
buildings, three stories high and rectagonal 
in shape. They were all very much alike 
except that two of them had glass-enclosed 
corridors running along the front of the first 
two floors. The other two had a corridor 
running down the center of the building on 
the first floor, and no corridor at all on the 
second. 

All the wards ran from front to rear. 
This meant that light and air could only 
come from the ends of the room, and when 
a ward opened on a corridor both light and 
air were minimized. This was a distinct dis- 
advantage, especially in the pneumonia 
wards, where fresh air plays so large a cura- 
tive part in the treatment of the disease. 
When screens had been placed between the 


PADRE 


219 


beds, shutting each off into a small compart- 
ment of its own, there was but little fresh 
air that could reach a patient in the center 
or at the end of the ward. 

We had none of that cheery sunlight 
pouring into the rooms which we had had 
at St. Nazaire, partly because there was no 
sun, the rainy season having come, so that 
we had few clear days and many rainy ones, 
but whatever light we had could only enter 
from the far end, or ends, of the room. The 
electric lights were weak and dim, so the 
wards in the evening were particularly de- 
pressing. Fortunately an evacuation hos- 
pital only keeps its patients, on the average, 
for three and a half days, where a base hos- 
pital keeps them for as many weeks. 

Commercy is a little provincial town, ly- 
ing on the river Meuse, about ten miles south 
of St. Mihiel, on the line from Paris to 
Nancy. Its population before the war was 
about eight thousand. Now, however, it 
had dwindled to less than that many hun- 


220 


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dred — and with reason, for the Germans had 
shelled and bombed the town until there 
were many wrecked and shattered buildings. 

The only monument of any historic in- 
terest is the Chateau of the Dukes of Lor- 
raine, built in the reign of Louis the 
Fourteenth. Here Cardinal de Retz, who 
drank perhaps too many “No Mazarin” 
toasts, wrote his Memoirs, reminiscences that 
reveal a curious philosophy of life. Now 
the Cardinal complains that his enemies had 
employed spies to learn at what hour of the 
night he was accustomed to visit Mme. de 
Pomereux and then had laid an ambuscade 
for him near the doors of her home; again 
he gives his attention to the preparation of 
a treatise “in imitation of Boethius, which 
I entitled ‘Consolations de la Theologie,’ in 
which I proved that every prisoner ought to 
endeavor to be ‘Vinctus in Christo’ (in the 
bonds of Christ), mentioned by St. Paul.” 

Here, too, Stanislaus, father of Marie 
Lesczynski, Queen of France, spent his 


PADRE 


exile. Twice called by the Poles to reign 
over them, rejected by Russia, Germany, 
and Austria, and abandoned by France, he 
found a refuge here, exchanging an uncer- 
tain throne in Warsaw for the quiet of 
Commercy. 

There were no patients in the Hospital 
when I arrived — which was just as well, for 
the organization had its hands full cleaning 
out the barracks and scrubbing floors. As 
I drove up to the Administration Building 
the grounds were buzzing like a hive, as 
the members of the detachment carted beds, 
mattresses, and equipment of various kinds 
to their proper places in wards, laboratories, 
operating rooms, or offices. 

I found quarters in a large double house 
which stood very near the entrance to the 
hospital grounds. The owner had left 
shortly after the Germans came to St. 
Mihiel — and with good reason, for one shell 
had struck one of the barracks behind his 
house, killing and wounding a score of men, 


PADRE 


while another had wrecked a house just 
across the street. He had installed a 
Frenchman and his wife, refugees from a 
frontier town near Strassburg, as caretakers, 
to whom I shall introduce you a little later. 
They gave me a room on the first floor, with 
a fireplace and a wide window looking out 
upon the street, but you cannot sleep in a 
fireplace and a window hinders rather than 
helps ablutions, so I had to look around for 
the necessary furniture. 

I had my bed, an army cot, from the Hos- 
pital with the necessary bedding. Madame 
supplied me with a table, a lamp, two chairs, 
and a washstand. Then we went down- 
town together to see if we could find such 
luxuries as a wash bowl, pitcher, soap dish, 
and the usual equipment of the “ablution- 
ist.” There were very few stores open and 
these were using most of their stock for win- 
dow dressing, but I succeeded in finding an 
easy chair and enough china to furnish my 
wash stand. 


PADRE 223 

Then Madame took me to the house of a 
friend, where she thought I might be able 
to buy or rent a chest of drawers. We were 
led through a hallway into a small glass- 
covered courtyard to consult with Monsieur. 
I found him garbed in a blue gingham 
apron, with a plate in one hand and a dish 
towel in the other. His wife explained that 
he was helping her in the housework, an ex- 
planation that was not, to speak precisely, 
necessary. I told her that her husband was 
“bien eleve et bien instruit,” whereupon she 
laughed and Monsieur broke out into a 
tirade against the horrors of war. 

“But consider, Monsieur,” he said, “it is 
I who must arise at six each morning; 
c’est moi qui fait les lits; it is I who must 
sweep. She made me mend the stockings, 
and now I wash, behold, the dish! It is a 
war of the most evil; c’est horrible, mon- 
sieur, mais encore, c’est la guerre.” 

However, when we turned to the question 


224 * 


PADRE 


of the hour, all their rooms were occupied 
and we could transact no business. 

So we came out into the empty street, with 
its silent rows of houses, their windows shut, 
their blinds closed, and their doors locked. 
There were stores with the signs proclaiming 
that within one might buy meats, or gro- 
ceries, or wines ; clothing, furniture, or 
books; but despite the bravado of the signs 
there was only dust upon the shelves. Here 
was all the material for a busy town, homes 
and stores, schools and churches, but all was 
silent, lifeless, motionless, and the grass was 
beginning to creep in among the cobble- 
stones of the streets. The contrast between 
that cheery interior and this dead street was 
startlingly acute. 

I sat in my room that night writing, with 
all my new purchases about me, when I 
heard the staccato humming of an aeroplane 
flying through the night, 


CHAPTER XIII 


F OUR days before the armistice was 
signed, as there were few patients in 
the Hospital and no serious cases, five 
of us secured a twelve hours’ leave and 
started on a “go-look-see” expedition to the 
Front. We knew we would get there; only 
we did not know just how we would go or 
how we could get back. We simply went 
down and stood on the square near the Post 
Office, where four roads met, and waited for 
a hitch. Presently a covered truck came 
along en route for Verdun, and we climbed 
on board. As it was well loaded, we were 
able to perch ourselves very comfortably on 
bales and boxes. 

The day was dull, and towards noon rain 
began to drizzle down from leaden skies. 
This lent an element of safety to our trip, 
225 


226 


PADRE 


but robbed it of anything spectacular, for 
clouds, rain, and mist prevented aeroplane 
activity, and thus blinded the artillery, so 
that there was little shelling or bombing of 
the roads. Consequently there was more 
passing to and from the Front than a clear 
day would have permitted. 

Two miles out from Commercy we began 
passing trenches, old and long since aban- 
doned. Indeed, they never had been used, 
for the French had prepared them to stop 
a German advance which had been halted at 
St. Mihiel. Sometimes these trenches ran 
along the roads; again they sprawled or 
straggled up the hillside, jagged gashes of 
yellow against the autumn brown. We 
passed old screens of camouflage by which 
the road had been protected. We went 
through towns that had been battered by 
the German guns; past churches with their 
towers still standing, although one won- 
dered why, for shell holes gaped wide in 
them — but their weather vanes rose trium- 


PADRE 


227 

phantly above the ruins. We saw rows of 
shattered houses, their roofs gone, the shut- 
ters hanging from broken hinges, their walls 
pierced and broken, while here and there a 
jagged new-made patch showed where one 
had been repaired. 

A regiment of poilus, their faded uni- 
forms splashed with mud, went swinging by. 
Some of the men looked worn, tired, or 
sick, but most of them gave an impression 
of being ready for anything. Their seventy- 
fives went with them ; wheels and guns were 
streaked with yellow and green and covered 
with dead grasses. Then came long strings 
of camions and trucks going to the rear for 
more supplies. 

We reached St. Mihiel a little before noon 
and spent half an hour wandering through 
the town. It was only a succession of ruins, 
piles of debris with every standing wall pit- 
ted and pockmarked by the fragments of 
exploded shells. The houses were roofless 
and floorless. Here four broken walls were 


PADRE 


left, there only one. Closet doors swung 
wide, and the creaking of their rusty hinges 
was almost the only sound, the language, as 
it were, of St. Mihiel. But the under- 
growth, weeds and running ivy, was already 
beginning to struggle up from beneath the 
fallen stones to hide the naked misery of the 
town. 

Over the stores the signs were still stand- 
ing, “Epicerie,” “Boucherie,” “Magazin des 
Nouveautes,” but the letters had been blown 
topsy turvy; some were lying on their side, 
others formed an acute angle, many were 
quite upside down. As far as you could see, 
up or down the street, or at the intersections 
of other streets, not a house had been left in- 
tact. Doorways, windows, walls, and roofs 
gaped wide, and from the sidewalks you 
could look into and through these tenantless 
homes. 

Yet every one of these rooms, now robbed 
of all decency and reserve, had its memories 
for some one. Here a child had been born; 


PADRE 


229 


there death had come knocking at a door 
now fallen into the gaping basement. In 
this room a promise had been given ; in that 
upper chamber some one had said farewell. 
Behind these walls old men had once pot- 
tered over their gardens in the evening of 
their lives ; along these streets wedding pro- 
cessions had passed, or little girls in their 
long white veils and their short white dresses 
going to their first communion, or again the 
black-robed mourners for the dead. 

It was hard to believe that there had ever 
really been the sound of laughter in St. 
Mihiel. Not even Pompeii gives a greater 
impression of desolation than do these si- 
lent streets. Here and there a house had 
been partially repaired and occasionally we 
caught a glimpse of a woman’s face looking 
out on us through shattered blinds, cling- 
ing, as the French do, to her ruined home. 
But civilians were rare, and you looked 
twice when you saw one. 

What a frightful uproar the bombard- 


230 


PADRE 


ment must have made to cause such havoc, 
not only from the screaming and bursting 
of shells, but from the rumble of falling 
walls ! 

Leaving St. Mihiel, our road crossed the 
canal which we now followed all the way to 
Verdun. We passed a number of canal 
boats which had been sunk, I presume, by 
shell fire. The evidence of war now became 
continuous, old trenches with their dugouts, 
barbed wire sometimes by the yard and 
sometimes by the acre. Several times we 
shot by old signs in French, giving warn- 
ing that the road ahead was under the di- 
rect observation of the enemy and subject 
to shell fire. We passed through Chauvon- 
court, Lacroix, and Tryon and came to a 
badly battered town which I think was 
Genicourt, where we stopped for lunch. 
This village was nothing but a mass of ruins, 
but there was more life in it than we had 
seen elsewhere, for the streets were filled 
with long lines of trucks and lorries which 


PADRE 


231 


had halted for the same reason that we had 
halted — because the Y. M. C. A. had estab- 
lished a canteen here. We found it in a pile 
of debris that once had been a house. 

Half an hour later we were on our way 
again, passing more trenches, or screens of 
canvas painted to deceive which bordered 
the road and crossed it above our heads, the 
frayed and ragged fragments still flapping 
in the breeze. We met automobiles carry- 
ing officers who were hurrying to get some- 
where, despatch riders on their noisy motor- 
cycles, troops, and more supply trains — and 
so we came to Verdun. 

Verdun, like all the other towns around, 
was simply a city of silent ruins. Blank, 
torn walls, shattered blinds, and riddled 
shutters stared at you with dead eyes ; street 
after street of mutilated houses faced you, 
whichever way you turned. Both towers of 
the cathedral had been pierced again and 
again by shells; most of the roof had fallen 
in, and here and there you could look out 


232 


PADRE 


through great holes in the walls. The 
stained glass of the windows was scattered in 
tiny fragments along the pavement of the 
church, although some small bits still clung 
to their leaded frames, only emphasizing 
what was lost. The floors were covered 
with fallen stones and plaster, which had 
been gathered up into neat piles. 

The rain was falling through the shat- 
tered roof. 

We exchanged our truck for an ambu- 
lance at Verdun and started for a dressing 
station at Bras, barely two miles from the 
front-line trenches. Soon after we had 
passed through the gates of Verdun the 
driver of our ambulance said, “We’d better 
make a run for it here, for every little while 
the ‘Jerries’ drop a shell along this stretch. 
They blew a house across the road last night, 
and you never know when they’re coming.” 
So we hung on and made a rush for it. 
Nothing happened, of course, for — as Mark 
Twain’s friend remarked, when they asked 


PADRE 


233 

if he had been present at a certain Indian 
Massacre, “Which you can see by my hair, 
I was absent.” 

We found the dressing-station near the 
junction of two cross-roads, and the captain 
in charge showed us around. 

The dressing-station proper was a dug- 
out, long, low, and narrow. I think it was 
about twenty-five feet long by seven feet 
wide, and just high enough for us to stand 
up in it. Six saw horses to hold three lit- 
ters occupied much of the space, leaving just 
room enough for the surgeons to work at 
the side. Across the road were three shel- 
ters of corrugated iron, the sides and roof 
being shaped like an inverted U. A shrap- 
nel shell had wrecked one of these the day 
before, spreading and riddling the sides of 
the adjoining shelter with fragments of fly- 
ing steel. Another shell had fallen in the 
road, killing an officer, and a third shell had 
struck an ambulance a hundred feet away. 
When men from the dressing-station reached 


234 


PADRE 


it there were two dead men within, another 
wounded so severely that he died a little 
later; a fourth had had his leg blown off, 
while the fifth was less seriously wounded. 

Also for several hours the day before the 
Germans had shelled the hill behind this 
dressing-station with high explosives, tear- 
ing up the ground and throwing the black 
earth fifty feet into the air. 

They told us that about three times a week 
the “Jerries” dropped gas shells around this 
dressing station as well as on Verdun, which 
was cheering news, as I had no gas mask. 
However, they hunted up one of an old style 
for me, which was good only for about four 
hours. That was quite good enough for 
me, for I figured that if the emergency arose 
and I was properly stimulated I could prob- 
ably cover quite a distance in four hours. 

There were many batteries of French sev- 
enty-fives in action a couple of hundred 
yards up the road, pounding the German 
lines, while a big American naval gun was 


PADRE 


235 


shaking the ground every three and a half 
minutes as it threw its shells on the fortifica- 
tions of Metz. 

It was late in the afternoon and the fad- 
ing light warned us that we had far to go 
before we should sleep that night, so we 
started on foot for Verdun. As we went we 
could see, through the mists of the falling 
rain, the hazy outlines of the naval gun 
across the fields, and hear it, too. Then 
came a long drawn out whi-z-z-z-z-, as a 
German shell came over feeling after that 
gun, if haply it might find it ; we heard half 
a dozen shells come screaming through the 
air, but continuous reports that stunned the 
ear were satisfactory evidence that no Ger- 
man shell had found its mark. 

We caught a passing truck before we had 
gone far and rode into Verdun, where it 
dropped us, and we had to walk a couple of 
miles through rain and mud. Then we 
caught another truck which carried us a few 
kilometers further, where we had to dis- 


236 


PADRE 


mount again and wait for another hitch. 
The next truck took us a little off the direct 
road, but brought us to the headquarters of 
a transportation organization where we 
thought that we might be able to get a truck 
which was going to Commercy. It was mess 
time and we had a bowl of coffee, steaming 
hot, and a quarter section of dried apricot 
pie. The coffee was a life saver, but the pie 
was a bomb. It was all right “qua pie,” but 
not as the “piece de resistance.” 

The commanding officer here advised us 
to call up a near-by ambulance station and 
see if we could not get an ambulance, which 
would not only be more comfortable, but 
would also make better time. We were 
told that one would be sent for us in half an 
hour. 

I stepped out of the shack to the doorway 
to wait for the ambulance. The lights of 
the kitchen were streaming out from two 
windows, throwing broad beams across the 
road, leaving a space of darkness between. 


PADRE 


237 


I suppose the mists and the heavy, low-lying 
clouds made it safe enough to allow them to 
leave their windows unscreened, but these 
were the only lights I saw shining out from 
any house until after the armistice was 
signed. 

As I stood there I heard the sound of 
marching feet, not the clear-cut, resonant, 
ringing sound of men marching over pave- 
ment, nor the crunching noise of feet on 
country roads, but that soft sound made 
when heavy shoes are being lifted out of the 
tenacious mud. It came nearer and nearer ; 
presently I could see a wavering shadow. 
Then a row of four very American faces ap- 
peared for a second in the light of a kitchen 
window. All turned toward us, grinned, 
and vanished, reappeared for another second 
in the light of the other window, and then 
were gone, but another row took their place, 
and another, and another, row after row, the 
same good-natured, friendly, grinning faces, 
with the water dripping from their steel hel- 


238 


PADRE 


mets, their faces shining with the wet; 
young, beardless, and making a joke of it 
all, line after line swung by, packs on their 
backs, rifles on their shoulders, and canteens 
dangling from their belts — American troops 
going up to their places in the line. We 
saw the last row pass through the gleam of 
the last window; then we saw them no more. 
We could only hear that soft slush-slush 
as hundreds of feet went sucking through 
the mud. 

And somewhere back home various hun- 
dreds of American mothers would doubt- 
less have worried all night long if they had 
seen what I had seen, because one boy or 
another in that long line was trudging along 
with his feet wet and his clothing dripping 
with the rain — or I wonder if they would 
not have found some measure of comfort in 
that parade of cheerful grins? 

At last the ambulance arrived and we 
piled in. We rode rapidly and without 
lights, which is rather ticklish work when 


PADRE 


239 


you are not accustomed to it, for the road 
was quite full of traffic of various kinds; 
men marching, camions, automobiles, am- 
bulances, supply trains, all moving towards 
the front as silently as might be, with no 
honking of horns and without lights. Shad- 
ows shot past us, sometimes from the rear, 
usually from the front ; others unexpectedly 
loomed up dead ahead and we all slid for- 
ward as the emergency brakes went on. 

Just before reaching St. Mihiel we 
stopped to light our lamps, for the road had 
become so full of traffic that the danger 
from our friends was greater than that from 
our enemies. 

St. Mihiel, lit up by the glare from our 
searchlights, looked haunted and ghostlike 
as we passed through its crumbling streets, 
while occasional gleams from the flashlights 
appearing and disappearing on either hand 
amid the ruins, as Americans stationed here 
went their rounds, looked like huge fire- 
flies flitting in the darkness. 


PADRE 


240 

All the way down from Verdun we had 
heard the mutter and rumble of the guns; 
the sky had been lit by the almost continu- 
ous flashes which the low-lying clouds re- 
flected and threw across our road. We did 
not know it then, but the shells and the guns 
that we had heard at Bras, the sudden red 
flashes that lit our way to St. Mihiel, were 
among the last of this long war, for three 
days later the armistice was signed and all 
the guns fell silent. 


CHAPTER XIV 


O N the afternoon of November fourth 
we received four patients, the first 
of a long procession. I went around 
and chatted with them, distributing the 
cigarettes which were the only things I had 
to give. 

I was to find the work here very different 
from that at St. Nazaire. It was difficult 
to establish any extensive work with an 
Evacuation Hospital, for the reason that 
such an organization must always be ready 
to pack up and move in twenty-four hours, 
as the lines might happen to shift or as im- 
portant operations in one sector might de- 
mand a reenforcement of the hospitals in its 
rear. The Unit with which I was now con- 
nected had only crossed from America three 
months before and had had practically no 
241 


242 


PADRE 


work to do until now. They had never had 
a chaplain on their staff, and there were no 
other Red Cross workers or Y. M. C. A. 
representatives connected with the organiza- 
tion. There was no storehouse to which I 
could go for supplies of any kind nearer than 
Toul, where we had a small warehouse, and 
Toul was twenty miles away. Neuf cha- 
teau, with another warehouse, was over 
forty miles distant, and we had no means of 
communication with these cities. Only 
when an ambulance chanced to be going 
through Toul on its way to Nancy could I 
jump on board and go down for supplies. 
I was called upon to act as Chaplain, 
Searcher, Hospital Representative, and 
Home Communication Agent; to write let- 
ters, get up supplies and distribute them 
through the wards, as well as conduct funer- 
als, lead such services as we could have on 
Sunday, and look after the sick and dying. 
And the Staff really did not know how to co- 


PADRE 


operate with me as they had done at St. Na- 
zaire. 

However, this first week we had very few 
patients, so I did not realize how heavy the 
work was destined to become. 

When I came out from mess one noon 
shortly after my arrival I saw a group of 
French soldiers gazing upwards. Follow- 
ing the direction of their eyes I saw, towards 
the north, a curious cluster of little clouds, 
all about the same size, irregularly grouped 
and now fading out. These were smoke 
clouds from exploded shrapnel. Some- 
where, too high for us to see, a Boche aero- 
plane was circling about, having come over 
on a “go-look-see” expedition. As nothing 
more happened, the guns apparently had 
ceased firing, and “Heinie” had evidently 
taken his leave, I went on to my quarters, 
where I settled down to my typewriter to 
get off some letters which the boys had dic- 
tated to me that morning. 

I had only begun this work, however, 


PADRE 


244 

when Monsieur came to call me out, saying 
that the Boche had returned. It was a per- 
fectly clear day, one of the very few bright 
days that we had in the two months I spent 
at Commercy, with a cloudless sky. I 
stepped to the door leading to the little gar- 
den behind the house and looked up. Just 
where I happened to be looking a little dot 
of white appeared against the blue back- 
ground of the sky. It was a brilliant white, 
like new-fallen snow in the clean North 
Woods. That little dot of white rolled out 
and expanded, turning over and billowing 
out; then another came, and still another, 
each forming out of nothing that the eye 
could see, and all standing out sharply de- 
fined against that blue background. More 
guns evidently were getting into action, for 
the dots were forming faster, now here, now 
there, until you could count them by the 
dozen. It was all so pretty that I forgot it 
was not a display intended for my benefit 
and walked out into the garden where I 


PADRE 245 

could see without the interference of the 
house, for now the shells were bursting di- 
rectly over my head. Presently I heard a 
little whistling sound that grew steadily 
louder and then suddenly stopped; again 
and again it came, “ws-ws-ws-ws,” and then 
I realized that bits of shrapnel were falling 
all around me. The house acquired a sud- 
den interest and I made it in three jumps. 
I had work to do there, anyway. 

It was quite evident that the Front was 
not far away. Almost any day you could 
hear the sound of the guns, and after night- 
fall the northern sky was lit by sudden 
flashes that left, when they vanished, a dark- 
ness that was deepened and intensified, only 
to be lit up again and again by the glare of 
the guns. At night we could hear aero- 
planes passing overheard, as by day we 
could both see and hear them; some on 
courier service between Verdun and Nancy, 
others bound for headquarters at Chaumont, 


246 


PADRE 


and others still up on guard duty or for ob- 
servation. 

When I went up to the wards on the 
fourth of November I found one which was 
curiously compounded. There were twenty 
beds in the ward, ten on each side. To the 
left of the aisle lay ten Germans, full-grown 
men, heavy, thick-set, and with thick mus- 
taches. To the right lay ten Americans, 
boys all, young, slight, and smooth-shaven. 
The ten Americans had taken the ten Ger- 
mans prisoners in a raid the night before, 
and now here they lay, vanquished and van- 
quishers, facing each other all day long. 
The German in the fourth bed had had his 
arm nearly blown off by a grenade which 
the boy in the bed directly opposite had 
thrown into a dugout when the Germans 
there had refused to come out and surrender. 

Later the prisoners were removed from 
this ward and placed by themselves. Among 
them was a lieutenant who could speak Eng- 
lish fairly well. I told him one morning 


PADRE 


m 


that I was quite willing to read the last com- 
muniques in this ward if he wished to hear 
them and translate them to the others; it 
was for him to choose. 

He sat straight up in bed and said 
“Pleass,” so I read the day’s reports from 
the Est Republiccdn aloud, and the first page 
of the paper exploded like a bomb, for it 
gave the news of the Kaiser’s abdication ! 

He interrupted the reading with an ex- 
clamation, “Iss that so-oh? It is goot, that. 
Now we shall be a free people.” 

And he was a Prussian, too! 

On November tenth we received a rush of 
wounded from the front near St. Mihiel, 
where the Americans had started to pinch 
off a small salient. Hardly had these been 
received before more wounded began to ar- 
rive from other parts of the sector, some 
coming even from the Argonne. At first 
slowly, then in a steady stream, the ambu- 
lances came rolling up to the Receiving Of- 
fice, where the stretcher bearers met them to 


PADRE 


248 

carry in the litters or lend an arm to those 
who could walk. From Sunday morning 
until early Tuesday the stream kept pour- 
ing in with no halt or ebbing of the flood. 
The operating tables — and we had ten of 
them — were going day and night, with re- 
lays of surgeons working steadily on. In 
forty-eight hours we received eight hundred 
patients, and by far the greater part of these 
came to us between Sunday night and Tues- 
day morning, the last hours of the war and 
the first of peace. 

Some of these men had been carried for 
six miles by the stretcher-bearers before 
reaching an ambulance, and they had been 
transferred from one to another until they 
had ridden in three ambulances before ar- 
riving at Commercy. Others, again, were 
only a couple of hours from the battle-field. 

We did not, however, begin to be really 
pressed until Monday night. Then the am- 
bulances came in faster than the patients 
could be handled in the Receiving Office, al- 


PADRE 


249 


though there were half a dozen men taking 
down their names and all the data for the 
hospital records. The long room was soon 
crowded with the sick and wounded, some 
sitting on the few benches that had been pro- 
vided, some standing, others crouching on 
the stone floor or lying on their litters. 

Those whose condition did not demand an 
immediate operation, together with the sick, 
were assigned to wards and put to bed. 
Others were sent to an adjoining room 
where they were examined more thoroughly 
and then sent on to the X-ray room, where 
the examination was completed. 

Some were taken to the Shock Ward. 
There was a terrifying stillness about this 
room. The few who entered here moved 
softly and spoke in whispers when they 
spoke at all, for every man brought here 
was seriously wounded ; his vitality was low 
and the chances of life were small at best, 
so absolute quiet was essential. The litters 
were placed on open boxes, which they 


250 


PADRE 


fitted like a lid. At the foot of each box a 
tin of canned heat was burning, sending its 
warmth through a stove pipe into the in- 
terior of the box on which the patient was 
lying, heavily covered with blankets. All 
you could see as you entered the dim-lit 
room was this short row of white faces, with 
dark shadows under the eyes and drops of 
perspiration on the foreheads, but the faces 
were cold and the drops were cold. 

I stopped for a moment with each one, 
just for a word, a benediction and the chance 
to send a message home. This could be 
done with no suggestion of alarm, for the 
first desire even of the slightly wounded was 
to let their people know that they were out 
of the trenches for the last time, as the armis- 
tice had been signed and the War was over. 
A message, even a word, might mean every- 
thing to their families, for many of the boys 
in this ward had seen the sun rise for the last 
time. 

The corridor outside was occupied by a 


PADRE 


251 


steady stream of litters going to the X-ray 
room, to the wards upstairs, to the pre-oper- 
ating room, to the operating room itself, or 
coming back empty for other cases. 

The pre-op erating room was gloomy 
enough and cheerless, with its stone floors, 
white walls, and high ceiling. It was dimly 
lit by one electric light and warmed by a 
wood stove which occupied the center of the 
room. Along one side ran a succession of 
wooden frames, each one about eight feet 
long, five and a half feet high, and shaped 
like an inverted V. At each end of every 
frame, and on both sides, brackets projected 
far enough to support six litters at head and 
foot, one litter on each side close to the floor, 
another pair about two and a half feet up, 
and the third pair at the top of the frame. 
I spent most of the evening in this room, 
doing the little that could be done in that 
time of weary waiting until the call for the 
next case should come from the operating 


room. 


252 


PADRE 


Each patient here had been through the 
X-ray room and bore on his breast a slip of 
paper giving the result of that examination, 
defining the nature of the wound, and stat- 
ing whether there were any foreign bodies 
to be removed. From time to time one of 
the Staff would enter, examine these slips, 
then scribble the name of a surgeon on a pad, 
tear off the sheet and place it on the litter, 
for one surgeon in the operating room 
might specialize in abdominal surgery, an- 
other in orthopaedics, another still in chest 
injuries or in brain surgery. 

Now the door would open; a new case 
would he brought in and lifted to an empty 
rack in one of the frames. Again that door 
would open, this time to admit the bearers, 
who had come with an empty stretcher to 
carry another boy to the operating room. 

So it went on, all day and all night, 
throughout another day and yet another 
night, with the ambulances steadily rolling 
in, the stretchers being carried along the 


PADRE 


halls, the scent of the ether always in the 
air, but I never heard a groan from the lips 
of one wounded man! On Tuesday night 
we had over eleven hundred patients in the 
Hospital, some of whom had been wounded 
within the last fifteen minutes of the War. 

On Monday morning, November elev- 
enth, the muttering and rumbling of the 
guns stopped abruptly. We missed them, 
just as you miss the accustomed ticking of 
a clock that stops at night when the house 
is still. But we knew what the sudden si- 
lence meant. 

At noon the Church bells began to ring, 
spreading abroad as far as the sound could 
reach, over the town and far out into the 
country, the news that the armistice had 
been signed, that Germany had yielded and 
the long War was over. 

However, a few days before, a premature 
report had set many towns and even cities 
in France ablaze with lights and delirious 
with noisy celebrations, so I thought it 


254 


PADRE 


would be well to get official confirmation of 
the news from the French Military Head- 
quarters in the Chateau. There I was told 
that the report was official, the word having 
come that morning from the Prefect at Bar- 
le-Duc. 

As I came back through the streets win- 
dows were being opened and shutters thrown 
wide, while French flags were flying from 
the dwellings. These were few, for there 
was only a handful now living in Com- 
mercy; still, every occupied house had done 
its best. In the evening we were greeted by 
the unaccustomed sight of lights shining out 
into the streets from unbarred windows — 
not many, for the habit of these sober years 
when, night after night, the inhabitants had 
heard the humming of enemy planes flying 
overhead was not lightly laid aside, but each 
night there were a few more unshuttered 
windows until once more the streets assumed 
something of the cheerfulness of the days of 
peace. 


PADRE 


255 


One enterprising merchant even installed 
an animated electric sign above his store 
which drew visitors from all the country side 
and filled the street with a delighted crowd. 
The sign consisted of one lone electric light 
that went circling round and around the sin- 
gle illuminated word “Patisserie.” I won- 
dered what these crowds would say if they 
could see the kitten playing with the spool 
of thread at Broadway and Thirty-eighth 
Street ! 

The daily work followed, as far as pos- 
sible, the lines already described in the chap- 
ters on St. Nazaire, so there is much of the 
life at Commercy that I can pass over with- 
out further comment. Each morning the 
ward surgeons and physicians sent a list of 
those who were seriously ill to the top ser- 
geant’s office, and this list was added to from 
time to time during the day. After break- 
fast I went first to the Administration 
Building to copy down this list and then 
went directly to these boys for a little talk 


256 


PADRE 


and a brief prayer. If they were Catholics 
I went for the priest, and later took him 
around the wards to give every boy of that 
faith an opportunity for confession. 

My erratic knowledge of French contin- 
ued to be of the greatest service, for we had 
many patients in the hospital who spoke no 
other tongue. One day, as I was passing 
the Receiving Office, an ambulance drove up 
with ten French soldiers, their packs and 
impedimenta. As the interpreter had gone 
to the village, I acted in his stead, getting 
the names, ages, organizations, identification 
numbers, and nature of the illness of these 
men. As they stood around me I estimated 
their ages as running from twenty-eight to 
thirty-six or seven, but when I put the ques- 
tion, “Quel age avez vous?” one after an- 
other answered, “Vingt-deux,” “Vingt- 
trois,” “Vingt-cinq,” and “Vingt-deux” 
again. The oldest was twenty-six. They 
had been through three years of war, some 


PADRE 


257 


through four years, and the record was writ- 
ten in their faces. 

On another day a wardmaster stopped me 
as I was going down one of the corridors to 
say that there was a “bunch of Frenchies” 
sitting in a ward which had not been opened. 
He wanted to know who had sent them 
there, and would I interpret for him? We 
went together to an unused ward where we 
found six men in their uniforms, sitting 
around a cold stove, their rifles stacked and 
their packs lying on the floor. They said 
that they had been brought here by an or- 
derly from the Receiving Office two hours 
before; he had ushered them in and left them 
here. Just why the orderly had not noticed 
and reported the fact that this ward was not 
in use I do not know, but the wardmaster 
reported it and had the men transferred to 
his own ward, where they were given 
pajamas and put to bed. 

One afternoon when we were evacuating 
patients I was standing at the rear of the 


258 


PADRE 


ambulance as the stretchers were being 
brought down stairs and laid on the ground 
until all four should be assembled, ready to 
be lifted and placed on the racks. A 
Frenchman in civilian clothes with his wife 
was crossing diagonally the open space be- 
tween the barracks and coming towards us. 
At first the ambulance concealed these 
stretchers, but when one last step brought 
the litters into sight, with their motionless 
burdens nearly covered by heavy blankets, 
the visitors stopped abruptly. The woman’s 
hand flew to her throat with a frightened, 
convulsive gesture. The man’s face ex- 
pressed in every line his unspoken fear. 

I knew instantly their thought — the pan- 
tomime was too eloquent to be misread ; they 
had come to see a son and feared lest they 
were to find him here, and the sight of these 
stretchers brought a sudden realization that 
was poignant with dread. The woman 
stood still, her hand clenched at her throat, 
while the man came rapidly forward. 


PADRE 


259 


I called out, “II n’y en a pas de Frant^ais; 
ils sont tous Americains.” 

The shadow lifted, the hand came slowly 
down, and the man came up to me with the 
relief very evident in his face, not only from 
the knowledge that his boy was not before 
him on the ground, but also because there 
was some one to whom he could speak in his 
own tongue. 

He asked for his son. Captain . I 

told him that he was doing well, there was 
no reason for alarm, and offered to take 
them to his bed. 

The four stretchers were now ready. I 
waited until they had been lifted into the am- 
bulance, when I said good-by to these boys, 
gave them cigarettes enough to keep them 
going until they reached the next hospital, 
and then went with Monsieur and Madame 
across the square to the barracks on the op- 
posite side. 

When we entered the ward they went 
straight to his bed, the last on the left hand 


260 


PADRE 


side. I do not think they saw another bed 
or were conscious of all the eyes that were 
turned on them, while the captain sat 
straight up with a look in his eyes and a hand 
outstretched that needed no interpretation. 
He was equally oblivious of any other pres- 
ence in that room. In the thought of these 
three the rest of us had all been blotted out. 

I turned down the ward to speak with the 
boys at the other end when Madame came 
towards me with a dozen questions, pouring 
forth one after the other, never pausing for 
an answer, Was everything being done that 
could be done? Was he getting the best of 
care? Was the food nourishing, the nurse 
of the best? What did the doctor think? 
Would I tell her everything? 

I went for the ward doctor, Lieutenant 
Lynch, who said that the patient was doing 
well and there was no present cause for ap- 
prehension. 

But as I watched this mothei hovering 
anxiously over that bed there came to me 


PADRE 


261 


the deeper realization of the anxiety of all 
the mothers in America whose sons were 
here, until the shadowy outlines of other 
mothers and wives and wives to be, “Some in 
silk and some in rags, and some in velvet 
gowns,” formed beside each bed, with the 
pain, the fear, the dread written in their 
faces. They were always here, only some- 
times “our eyes were holden that we might 
not see them.” This one mother made all 
others clearer to our sight. 

“Gee,” said one boy, “I wish we had some 
one from home to visit us like that.” 


CHAPTER XV 


T O the end of my stay in Commercy 
magazines and books were few and 
very difficult to obtain. Even when 
I could get down to the warehouse at Toul 
I could never secure more than forty or fifty, 
and we had an average of four hundred pa- 
tients in the wards. As I was not able to 
get into the operating room at Evacuation 
13 as I had done with Base 101, I had more 
time to give to the wards, and I used to spend 
hours reading short stories aloud. 

One day the result was rather surprising 
and amusing. I had entered a surgical 
ward with “The Speckled Band,” from “The 
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.” Only 
one of the patients had ever heard the story, 
so it was as new to them as it should have 
been exciting. 


262 


PADRE 


263 


Presently deep breathing on my right 
told me that one of my auditors had dropped 
off to sleep. Soon he was joined by an- 
other on the left ; a gentle snore further down 
the ward marked the defection of number 
three; the next to go A.W.O.L. was a boy 
who had had his leg amputated the day be- 
fore. When I saw what was happening I 
dropped my voice to a drone, made it 
monotonous, and presently tiptoed out, 
leaving all but three of the boys asleep. 

I think the waiter may now present the 
check to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

However, all these boys had come through 
recent operations; they had suffered much 
pain and had slept but little the night be- 
fore, so this nap was the best possible medi- 
cine for them. But the next day they ac- 
cused me of having left them without finish- 
ing the story, so I read it all over again. 

A part of each day was spent in reading 
the morning news. I remember one boy 
who had been fatally wounded by a bullet 


PADRE 


264 

through the lungs. When I came to him 
he was asleep, with only the whites of his 
eyes showing. He roused as I passed my 
hand over his forehead and looked up at me. 

“Do you know,” I said, “that the Kaiser 
has abdicated his throne and fled to Hol- 
land?” His face lit up, his eyes eager, his 
lips smiling. “No!” he exclaimed, “is that 
so? That’s great.” 

Then I spoke to him of another King 
who left his throne that we might reign with 
him, of One who having loved His own 
loveth them unto the end; who ever liveth 
to make intercession for us. We had a 
prayer together which he closed with his 
own “Amen.” 

“I am glad you did that,” he said, and so 
was I, for the next day another face looked 
up at me from his pillow. 

Lacking magazines, I was thrown back 
more than ever upon my own resources and 
almost daily made the round of the wards 
with little talks on current topics. One day, 


PADRE 


265 


when the morning papers contained the ac- 
count of Germany’s wail over the clause in 
the armistice requiring her to surrender 
thousands of locomotives and other railroad 
rolling stock, I spoke to the wards of Ger- 
many’s systematic loot and wreckage of the 
Belgian lines, reciting the lists of her plun- 
der there and also quoting the complaint of 
Hungary that, although they had the best 
harvest they had reaped in years, yet they 
could not move their grain, as Germany had 
taken so many of their engines and freight 
cars out of the country; wherefor the Hun- 
garian cities were facing famine. What 
was now being taken from Germany under 
the armistice was only a part of what she 
herself had stolen from other countries. Her 
wail was the lament of the thief who objected 
to being searched for stolen goods. 

One of the boys said that a lieutenant in 
his company, finding two motorcycles stand- 
ing unguarded in the street, had gathered 
them up and gone off with them. 


266 


PADRE 


No, they do not call it that in the army; 
they call it “ ‘salvaging.” 

Three days afterwards he left one of his 
new possessions in front of regimental head- 
quarters. When he came out five minutes 
later it was gone; some one had “salvaged” 
it again. The lieutenant tore around and 
raved ; he said the American army was noth- 
ing but a gang of crooks and thieves; you 
could not get off your cycle to light a 
cigarette but some army thief would steal 
the saddle before you could scratch your 
match — quite forgetting 1 how these cycles 
had come into his possession in the first in- 
stance. We all agreed that this fairly illus- 
trated the state of mind of Germany. 

One day I received from home a clipping 
from a New York paper saying that the 
German Ambassador to Mexico had issued 
a proclamation calling on all good Germans 
to decorate their homes and offices with Ger- 
man flags “and celebrate the day when their 
nation had given peace to the world.” I 


PADRE 


267 


read this in all the wards as a part of the 
morning news, also reminding the boys of 
that famous battle in which Artemus Ward 
had vanquished a “Secessioner.” In his 
own account of the struggle Artemus says, 
“By a sudden and adroit movement I 
planted my left eye against my adversary’s 
fist; then, throwing myself to the ground, 
I drew him violently down on top of me and 
thrust my nose between his teeth.” The 
two victories seemed to us to have much in 
common. 

The Petit Parisien gave an interesting ac- 
count of the celebration in New York City 
when the tidings of the signing of the armis- 
tice were received. I took this up to the 
wards and read it. The paper said that the 
news had come about two o’clock in the 
morning, when the city was asleep. The 
first intimation was given by the blowing of 
the whistles on all the harbor craft, ferry 
boats, tugs, and river steamers, and by the 
deep-throated roar of the great ocean lin- 


268 


PADRE 


ers. Then the whistles of the fire stations 
and the factories joined in; church bells all 
over the city took up the tale and rang it out. 
Windows flew open, and soon voices were 
calling the news along the streets. Thou- 
sands upon thousands dressed, hunted up 
the horns, cow bells, rattles, anything that 
could make a noise, with which they had cele- 
brated the last New Year’s Eve, and came 
pouring out from their houses in all parts 
of the city. All the rest of the night the 
uproar continued, and the sun rose upon a 
world that seemed to have gone mad. That 
day was made a civic holiday; the city of- 
fices, schools, shops, factories, and all places 
of business were closed. Processions filled 
the streets. Confetti and the tape from the 
tickers were thrown from the windows of 
the downtown section until the pavements 
below were ankle deep. 

So the news was received in America. 

As I read the boys began to sit up in bed, 
every eye was centered on me, they began 


PADRE 


269 


to grin, and that grin steadily widened until 
I stopped, and then they shouted until the 
building rang. As I started to pass on to 
another ward boy after boy stopped me to 
ask, “Do you think they will do anything 
for us when we get home?” 

I told them that I thought they would 
find that they owned America when they re- 
turned. I still think they ought to. 

One morning as I passed down the long 
corridor, glancing through the windows that 
led into the wards to make sure that no un- 
used ward of yesterday had been tenanted 
during the night, I saw four boys in a room 
that had been empty the day before. I went 
in to speaK with them, to ask them when 
they had arrived and what the trouble was, 
whether they were sick or wounded. 

One of them told a curious story. He 
and the boy in the adjoining bed had been 
taken out of the line and brought to regi- 
mental headquarters, where they were as- 
signed to clerical work. As they had some 


PADRE 


no 

trouble with their eyes, however, they were 
told to report to Evacuation Hospital 13 to 
be examined and fitted with glasses. They 
had started the afternoon before, walking 
several miles under heavy packs through a 
drizzling rain, until they were picked up by 
an ambulance which was on its way to Com- 
mercy. 

When the ambulance stopped at the door 
of the Receiving Office the stretcher-bearers 
met them, lifted them out, and carried them 
in. They must have been very casually ex- 
amined, for after answering the usual ques- 
tions they were picked up, still on their 
stretchers, and carried to the ward to which 
they had been assigned. Here the ward- 
master and orderly lifted them from their 
litters to the beds, undressed them, helped 
them into their pajamas, and covered them 
over. And these boys had walked some ten 
miles through rain and mud that very after- 
noon! 


PADRE 


271 


“But, Padre,” they said, “don’t wake 
them up. This bed feels so good!” 

Some of these men had striking tales to 
tell of the German air-men, who had come 
over our lines day after day where we had 
no planes to protect them, flying low and 
spraying our men with machine gun fire. 
One enemy aeroplane they had brought 
down with their rifles. 

They credited the German pilots with the 
greatest audacity and skill. The German 
Staff were anxious for photographs of one 
sector of our lines, but here we were so well 
supplied with anti-aircraft guns that it 
seemed impossible to secure them. One 
day, the boys said, they saw two planes ap- 
proaching, one evidently trying to escape 
and the other rapidly overhauling the fugi- 
tive. When the two machines were less 
than a mile away the pursuer opened fire; 
suddenly the leading plane veered, fluttered 
a moment as if the pilot had lost control, 
and then shot down headlong from a height 


PADRE 


of over seven thousand feet, falling almost 
directly towards our lines. The men 
jumped up and ran forward to pick up the 
pieces, but when the falling plane was only 
a couple of hundred feet above their heads 
it suddenly flattened out and flew along the 
lines, and they could see the observer snap- 
ping his camera right and left. Before they 
could get back to their guns the aeroplane 
was just a dim speck in the distance, flying 
back with the spoils and the honors of war. 

They told me, also, that the Germans 
would sometimes stage a dramatic battle in 
the air, and when they had riveted the atten- 
tion of the Americans one plane would shoot 
over and drop a bomb on one of our ob- 
servation balloons. The feelings of the ob- 
server as he saw the enemy plane approach- 
ing and listened to the men below cheering 
the fighters on but paying no heed to him 
would form a chapter by itself, but I doubt 
if it should be printed. 

Some of our wounded had been brought 


PADRE 


273 


to us from the Argonne. One of them told 
me that the Infantry had gone far ahead of 
the guns, for the mud had bogged the Ar- 
tillery and the horses had been killed in the 
effort to keep up with the advance. These 
were mostly English horses who had already 
suffered in the War ; many of them had been 
gassed and they were not strong enough for 
the work. Often they had to use twelve 
horses, instead of six, to bring one gun into 
position and to employ the same horses 
again and again to move the other guns and 
caissons forward. 

This boy had been sent forward with his 
detachment to prepare some gun emplace- 
ments. They were engaged in this work 
when a company of French artillerymen 
came tearing through the woods, or what 
had once been woods, for now they were just 
a tangled mass of fallen trees and lopped off 
branches from the shelling of both sides. 
They had neither guns nor horses, for their 
teams had been killed in the same mud that 




PADRE 


had stalled their guns, but word had come 
back of a German battery of seventy-sevens, 
abandoned with its ammunition dump, and 
this company had been sent forward to man 
these guns. In a very few seconds the muz- 
zles were swung around, and German shells 
were falling on the German lines. 

It was heroic and suicidal, for the guns 
could not be shifted, and the Germans knew r 
their exact location. There was no hope of 
masking their fire or concealing their posi- 
tion. In about an hour guns and men had 
been wiped out. 

He also told me of meeting a major of 
the United States Field Artillery who came 
from his own home town in the middle west, 
whose sister had taught him when he had 
been in school. The major recognized him 
and stopped for a moment’s chat. He said 
that he was in command of two batteries, 
eight guns, which were posted not far away; 
he did not quite like the position, for they 
stood where they could not escape being 


PADRE 


275 


spotted if any German plane came over. 
However, he would keep them going as long 
as he could. 

The next day an aeroplane came over 
from the German lines. It circled around 
until the observer succeeded in locating the 
batteries, and then the German shells began 
falling, first bracketing the target, then 
narrowing the bracket until they found their 
mark. They sent over a little of everything 
they had, shrapnel, mustard gas, and high 
explosive. The smoke of the bursting shells 
never cleared from about those guns. He 
could see the flash of the discharges light- 
ing up the mist, but neither guns nor can- 
noneers. One piece was presently put out 
of action, then another; one shell exploded 
between two guns, dismounting both; still 
the gunners fought on. When all but two 
had been silenced what was left of the bat- 
talion marched out of the smoke, carrying 
their wounded with them. 

Another boy told me that his company had 


276 


PADRE 


been ordered forward on the morning of 
November eleventh, a few hours before the 
armistice went into effect. He was right be- 
hind his lieutenant when he noticed little 
spurts of mud flying from the road just 
ahead, from which he knew that they were 
walking into machine gun fire. He called to 
the lieutenant and together they dropped 
into the ditch beside the road, but here they 
were exposed to fire from the other side. As 
they crept forward a bullet struck his leg. 
He halted and then started to crawl back, 
the bullets meanwhile whining over his head. 

Presently he came to a pile of stones that 
blocked his way; he lifted these down one by 
one to build a rampart between himself and 
the enemy. He was rejoined here by the 
lieutenant who helped him in this work. 
The rampart finished, they lay still for some 
time, listening to the “ping” of the shots 
as they struck their wall. At last the lieu- 
tenant rose and made a dash for it, getting 
back in safety. 


PADRE 


277 


Then this hoy commenced to crawl out 
into the open, with the bullets striking the 
ground all around him and sometimes throw- 
ing the earth into his eyes. He was crawl- 
ing up the slope of a little hill, twenty or 
thirty feet high, knowing that once over the 
crest he would be safe, but the crawl was 
slow, the fire rapid, and the way intermin- 
ably long; his chances seemed small at best. 
When he was only a hundred feet from the 
top, but nearly spent, a boy came running 
down to him, lifted him to his feet, put his 
arm around him and helped him back. The 
air was full of bullets that sang as they 
whirred past, cutting their clothes, but never 
really touching them. At last they topped 
the rise, threw themselves flat, and rolled be- 
hind the protection of the hill. 

Their escape seemed as miraculous as the 
rescue had been reckless. Once out of 
reach of the German guns, he used his scarf 
for a tourniquet until the stretcher-bearers 


278 


PADRE 


could pick him up, and that night he was 
lying in our hospital. 

Some of these boys had stories to tell of 
the way in which the war had ended along 
the firing line. One fellow told me that his 
company had gone over at four o’clock in 
the morning of November eleventh. The 
night was dark and bitter cold. Directly in 
their front was a brook whose waters came 
up to their armpits. A board had been laid 
across it, but in the dark he could not find 
this bridge, so he jumped in and waded 
through the stream, holding his rifle high 
above his head. They attacked and carried 
their objective, but as the day broke and 
their position became clearly revealed they 
were heavily gassed and shelled. Still they 
clung to the craters that the shells had made 
and hung on. 

At nine o’clock the orders reached them 
to cease fire at eleven. The next two hours, 
he said, were the longest he had ever spent. 
As long as these men did not know that the 


PADRE 


279 


armistice had been signed it made little dif- 
ference where they were or what they did, 
whether they went forward or back, or held 
their ground. But to lie here in a shell hole 
listening to the bullets singing through the 
air and to the roar of shells that were burst- 
ing all around, and know that if he could 
pull through two hours more, one hour, 
twenty minutes, ten minutes, five, he could 
count on seeing home once more, this 
knowledge made even the seconds drag. 

At eleven o’clock the bugles blew all along 
the German line and the guns were stilled. 
The Americans jumped up and ran down 
the road to a small ruined village which was 
close at hand, coming back with their arms 
full of wood. In less time than it takes to 
tell it bonfires were blazing all along the 
line and right out in the open, where, ten 
minutes before, no one had dared to go. 

A long stretch of road, well protected by 
screens of camouflage, ran behind our lines. 
The battle smoke had hardly lifted from the 


280 


PADRE 


ground, the echoes of the guns had hardly 
died away, before officers in their automo- 
biles were driving along that road, and also 
in the fields on either side under the very 
muzzles of the German artillery. It all 
seemed unreal and impossible to him. 

Another boy told me that when his com- 
pany had attacked the enemy gave in the 
center, but held at the flanks, so that they 
spent the last morning of the war in a nar- 
row pocket, being hammered on both sides. 
His captain and two lieutenants were killed 
almost as the bugles began to proclaim the 
cessation of hostilities. 

Others still told me that they had lain 
wounded on the ground when eleven o’clock 
came, waiting for the stretcher-bearers. The 
first thing they knew of any armistice was 
when they saw a cascade of hats and rifles 
streaming up from the German trenches. 
Then a few heads rose cautiously above the 
parapet, and voices drifted over crying, 
“Fineesh,” “Fineesh.” Some of the enemy 


PADRE 


281 


started towards our lines; they would take 
a few steps, halt, and then come on again, 
only to halt once more. At last a few of 
the Americans waved to them and then, 
throwing all hesitation away, they came over 
on the run. 

There was some handshaking and frater- 
nizing, but one boy had a tale that I liked 
better. He said a German had entered a 
dugout where a mess sergeant was checking 
up some bags and boxes of supplies. He 
opened the conversation by saying that he 
had lived in Chicago for seven years and 
hoped to return there after the war. This 
remark eliciting no response, he tried an- 
other, and then another; still silence from 
the sergeant. The German finally said that 
it was so long since he had seen any sugar; 
he wondered what it tasted like ; no answer. 
He made one more attempt and frankly 
asked for some. 

This was too much for the sergeant. He 
straightened up and exploded, “You 


282 


PADRE 


son of a dachshund, here I’ve been .chasing 
you half way across Europe to stick a bay- 
onet into you, and you want me to feed you 
sugar! Well, here it is, take it.” He ran 
his hand down into the barrel, picked up a 
packed lump half as big as his head, and 
dashed it into the German’s face. 

Well, when I remembered that other ser- 
geant of whom I had been told at St. Na- 
zaire, found by his comrades stretched on a 
rack across the traverse of the German 
trench, or those young girls whom the Brit- 
ish found dead in the Teutons’ front-line 
trenches, where they had been used to pol- 
ish the officers’ boots by day — and for other 
purposes by night — I only regretted that this 
sergeant was not as gifted as Briareus. 


CHAPTER XVI 


U P to the twelfth of November all I 
had to distribute through the wards 
was the contents of one case from 
the Sun Tobacco Fund, but on the day after 
the armistice went into effect a camion came 
from Neuf chateau with 10 cases of Camp- 
bell’s soups, 10 cases of canned peaches, 10 
cases of cookies, 5 cases of condensed milk, 
5 cases of cigarettes, 1 case of pipe tobacco, 
1,000 boxes of tooth powder, 500 tooth- 
brushes, 50 pipes, 50 safety razors, and 1 
large box of writing paper. 

Each day thereafter I took Reedy, who 
had been detailed from the personnel to as- 
sist me, and together we piled a stretcher 
high with soups, peaches, milk, cookies, 
cigarettes, toothbrushes, and other supplies 
and carried them through the wards. We 
283 


284 


PADRE 


found that the toothbrushes vanished like 
the ‘‘Ten little Indians sitting on a fence.” 
One boy needed a new brush because a bul- 
let had decapitated his old one. Another pa- 
tient said that all the packs of his company, 
including, of course, his own, had been 
stacked up together when a shell landed 
squarely on top of the pile. “They were 
there one minute; the next there was a big 
noise, a cloud of smoke full of flying mud 
and toilet articles, and then the packs were 
all gone.” 

The soups were of little service at first, 
as we had only six nurses in the Hospital 
and their hands were far too full to allow 
them the necessary time to cook for their 
patients — although in at least one of the 
wards the nurse and the wardmaster to- 
gether used all that we gave them and asked 
for more. However, two days later, reen- 
forcements came to us from Red Cross 
Headquarters at Neuf chateau, Captain 
Roche as Hospital Representative and Miss 


PADRE 


285 


Mossman and Miss Fisher as Searchers. 
The young ladies began at once preparing 
soup, which Reedy carried around in a huge 
container so that they could serve it hot in 
every ward. I cannot hope to make you 
understand how eagerly this hot soup was 
anticipated, especially by those patients who 
were on a liquid diet. The peaches also 
were a treat, but these we had been able to 
serve from the first. These Searchers also 
took over most of the letter-writing for the 
boys. They attended the funerals and sent 
home to the families of those that died let- 
ters that contained just the detail those at 
home would wish to know, with a touch of 
comforting sympathy. 

The razors were distributed, one being 
placed in each ward, but they did not last 
long — the “Salvagers” got them. How- 
ever, Reedy was an expert with the straight 
razor and went in and out among the beds 
almost daily, distributing shaves to those 
who could not shave themselves. 


286 


PADRE 


We missed greatly the entertainment 
Troupes of the Y.M.C.A. which had been so 
helpful at St. Nazaire. There was less ex- 
cuse for this, as these Troupes were con- 
stantly passing through Commercy and 
spending hours at the hotel nearly every time 
they came. I saw the man in charge and 
told him the conditions in the Hospital, the 
large number of patients, the lack of books 
or magazines, and the great need. He prom- 
ised me a troupe on the following Friday 
and one or two each week thereafter. How- 
ever, when I went down town on the ap- 
pointed day to bring them up, their camion 
was at the door and they were just leaving 
for some other place. 

Neither on that day nor on any other was 
the promise of entertainment troupes kept. 

It was the only time I knew the Y.M.C.A. 
to fail, and the failure here was tragic. The 
work they did at St. Nazaire, at Cannes, and 
wherever else I saw them threw this one 
failure into stronger contrast. It was the 


PADRE 


287 


more exasperating because the wards had 
been expecting them, all arrangements had 
been made, the usual morning work of clean- 
ing up had been finished at an early hour, so 
that every ward was ready and anticipat- 
ing their coming. 

Among our other patients we had two 
French boys. One was only nine years old 
and came to us with a leg broken when he 
had been struck by a motorcycle. His 
father was “Un soldat qui guardait les 
Boches prisonniers,” and his mother lived 
and worked in a near-by village. She came 
over several times a week to visit him, bring- 
ing French story books with tales of mar- 
velous giants. When I came to his bed I 
often stopped long enough to read a story 
from his growing library. We also brought 
him cookies, for which he thanked us in very 
precise, slow English words of which he was 
evidently proud. 

The other boy was sixteen years of age. 
Three years before he was in school at Ver- 


288 


PADRE 


dun when a shell dropped on his home, 
wrecking it and killing both his parents, 
leaving him only a brother who was with the 
armies of France. A French regiment took 
him in charge until they were moved up to 
the front line, when they left this thirteen- 
year-old boy in camp with a note for their 
successors, so the next regiment that came 
along added his name to their mess roll and 
assumed the trust. He had gone all along 
the French front with one regiment or an- 
other until the Americans took over the sec- 
tor and fell heir to the boy. The hospital 
card over his bed read, “Mascot; U.S.F.A., ,, 
for a Captain of the United States Field 
Artillery had legally adopted the boy, who 
was keenly looking forward to coming to 
America when the war should be over. 

While I was translating some hair-raising 
exploits of Arsene Lupin he would come 
and sit beside me, reading the French as I 
read it aloud in English. He was strongly 
built, bright and manly, with a handsome 


PADRE 


389 


face and winning ways. I never heard him 
whimper, but sometimes when his broken 
arm was paining he would scowl and shake 
his fist at it. 

When I entered one of the wards one 
morning, I was instantly hailed from one of 
the beds half way down the room, “Won’t 
you come here a moment, Padre?” The boy 
who had called wanted to know if his brother 
had been brought to this hospital. He told 
me that the afternoon before his company, 
being under heavy machine gun fire, had 
been ordered to fall back and take shelter. 
When he was less than a hundred feet from 
the trench to which they were retreating he 
was struck in the leg and fell. 

His brother, who was some twenty feet 
in front, had kept looking back as he ran to 
see that this boy was unhurt, and now he 
saw him fall. He swung around instantly 
and came back. Kneeling beside him, he 
unstrapped the pack from the fallen boy and 
bound up his wounds with his first-aid kit ? 


290 


PADRE 


all the time exposed to this heavy machine 
gun fire. He had just finished when he was 
struck twice, once in the leg and again low 
down in the back. He fell over his brother, 
crying, “They’ve got me, Jim.” The boy’s 
voice dropped almost to a whisper as he said, 
“I saw his blood.” 

I went straight to the Receiving Office, 
but all I could learn was that the other 
brother had not been brought to us. It 
would have been useless to try any further 
inquiry, for we had only one telephone and it 
would have taken days to locate and get a 
report on this case. I went back and told 
him that his brother had not come to us, that 
I would keep an eye out for him, but when 
he reached a Base Hospital, to which he 
would be transferred in a day or two, the 
Red Cross there could make inquiries, 
whereas any answer that we might get would 
come long after he had left us. 

But this story brought to my mind an- 
other that I had heard in Paris. 


PADRE 


291 


A boy had been brought to a hospital who 
should have made rapid progress, for his 
wound was slight. Instead of this, how- 
ever, he lost ground steadily until his con- 
dition was becoming serious. The surgeons 
were puzzled, for there was nothing in the 
wound to account for his condition. They 
thought there must be some nervous com- 
plication, some anxiety, a fear or dread of 
something that was preying on his. mind. 
He was restless, sullen, and silent. 

One of the Red Cross women was called 
in to see if she could win the boy’s confidence 
and find out where the trouble lay. For a 
week she visited him daily and several times 
a day, sitting by his bed, asking no questions, 
but hoping for the time when he would 
speak. One day she began asking about his 
home, his father, mother; did he have a 
brother, and where was he? Then the boy 
broke down and poured out the terror of his 
soul. 

His brother and he had enlisted in the 


292 


PADRE 


same company. One night they had gone 
out on a raid into No Man’s Land; they 
had been discovered, whereupon the Ger- 
mans had opened on them with rifles and 
machine guns, so that they were compelled 
to retreat. He had reached his trench in 
safety, but as he turned to scramble down 
he saw, by the light of a star-shell, his 
brother lying thirty feet away where he had 
been struck down by a bullet, whether from 
a rifle or machine gun he did not know. His 
brother saw him and called for help. He 
answered that they had received orders not 
to leave the trench. His brother cursed 
him, and that curse was the last word his 
ears had heard. 

After that came silence, a silence that 
nothing could break, no laughter in the 
wards, no other human voice, not even the 
ether of the operating room; it was surren- 
dered to a curse that was always whispering 
in his ears. 

Instantly the Red Cross went to work to 


PADRE 


293 


locate that brother, to find out if he had been 
brought in to one of our hospitals, or 
whether he was a prisoner in Germany. So 
the story was told to me, without names, 
either of persons or of places. It is exas- 
perating that I cannot tell you the sequel to 
either of these stories, but many of the tales 
that came to us had no proper ending, and 
so it was with these. 

For some time we had known that a Base 
Hospital, and perhaps a group of these, 
would move into Commercy, relieving Evac- 
uation Hospital 13 and taking over our 
work. On Saturday, November thirtieth, 
Base Hospital 91 arrived, and the next week 
was very busy and confused, for we were 
moving out and the new Unit was coming in. 
Our camp cots were being removed from the 
wards and the far more comfortable iron 
beds with good springs substituted; our 
equipment of all kinds was being replaced 
by that of Base 91. In one of the corri- 
dors I saw a stove with the fire still burn- 


294 


PADRE 


ing, standing where it had been placed to 
make way for that which belonged to our 
successors. Old mattresses stuff ed with 
shavings were merrily burning behind the 
barracks and real mattresses were replacing 
them. 

The new hospital had sailed the day be- 
fore the armistice, and the news had reached 
them at sea. Immediately the port holes 
were opened; lights appeared in the cabins, 
while both officers and men actually smoked 
on deck after sunset. Foch and the Allies 
had put an end to the terror that flieth by 
night. 

The new Base Hospital was most prom- 
ising. There was a snap and vigor which 
was evident even in the bulletins that were 
posted in the Administration Building, the 
discipline and the morale were excellent, and 
the whole organization seemed to be instinct 
with the spirit of service. The nurses did 
not arrive until several days after the Staff, 


PADRE 295 

so for a time the doctors had to do the nurs- 
ing. 

On the first morning after Base 91 took 
hold I saw something in one of the pneu- 
monia wards that fairly illustrates the spirit 
of the entire organization. When I entered 
the room one of the patients was in a fright- 
ful mess. I found the doctor coming down 
the aisle with a pail of warm water and 
towels on his arm. I went with him, and 
together we bathed the boy thoroughly and 
changed his sheets. Then the doctor 
passed on to another bed, leaving me to put 
on clean pajamas and finish making up this 
bed. 

As I gave the pillow a final pat the boy 
said to me, “Seems like that’s the first time 
I’ve had a bed made up for me.” I had had 
a little talk and a prayer with this boy the 
day before, and when he thanked me, he said, 
“Why, Padre, if I didn’t believe in God 
after all He’s brought me through I should 


296 PADRE 

be worse than” — he hesitated a moment and 
then went on — “worse than a murderer.” 

When I left his bed I joined the doctor 
and went on to others, making beds and 
changing pajamas until I was called out to 
take a funeral. But this was fairly indica- 
tive of the spirit of the new Hospital, ener- 
getic, ready for any task, courteous and 
kindly to the boys. It was an organization 
with which it would have been a pleasure to 
work. 

When I visited this ward again that after- 
noon there was an empty bed, for the boy 
whose bed we had made that morning was 
gone, and the next day I had the first fun- 
eral for Base 91. 


CHAPTER XVII 


W HILE serving with Evacuation 13 
I sent home the two little sketches 
of war scenes in Commercy which 

follow: 

i 

The Censor has relaxed since the armis- 
tice has been signed and our troops have 
set off for Germany, so I may now say that 
Evacuation Hospital Number 13 is occupy- 
ing a cold and dreary set of stone buildings 
that were once French Military Barracks, 
in the town of Commercy. We are just 
ten miles south of St. Mihiel, and up to the 
eleventh of November we could hear the al- 
most steady drumming of the guns, and at 
night we could watch — if we were dressed 
for it — the flashing lights of the artillery, 
297 


298 


PADRE 


like summer lightning in the sky. Once in 
a while, a Boche aeroplane came over on a 
“go-look-see” expedition, and then, against 
orders and all our better knowledge, we 
could stand outside and watch sudden little 
white clouds unfold out of little dots against 
a clear and deep blue sky. They were so 
pretty to watch that you forgot it was not 
all a pyrotechnic display for your benefit, 
until a little whistle, growing steadily louder 
and suddenly stopping, warned you that 
fragments of the shrapnel that was responsi- 
ble for those very pretty white clouds were 
beginning to come back to earth in your im- 
mediate vicinity. 

There were other things that we saw in 
those early November days: we saw ambu- 
lances come rolling steadily in with their 
pitiful loads; stretcher cases, walking cases, 
patients that were carried in pick-a-back, or 
by the bearers who made “chairs” with their 
hands, as is the custom of children. Quite 
a number of these sick and wounded were 


PADRE 


299 


Catholics who wanted to see the priest, and 
that is how I made the acquaintance of the 
little old man who used to speak English 
forty years ago with a friend long dead, 
but because he still remembers a few words 
and understands a few phrases he has been 
proudly set aside by the local parish to min- 
ister to the American boys. I have tried 
him in English, and found it “mene, mene, 
tekel, upharsin” — at least, it is “upharsin.” 
We get along better in French. 

There is no telephone service in Com- 
mercy, wherefor we get things much 
quicker than they do in Paris where there 
is one. If I want the priest, I go for him. 
That is how I came to know him, his home, 
and his household. The home and the 
household are unique. I always find him in 
a little old kitchen. The rest of the house 
is comparatively new, but the kitchen, with 
its huge chimney, its heavy doors and quaint 
cupboards, belongs to a time long past. I 
usually find him sitting before the chimney. 


300 


PADRE 


in his sabots and with his breviary in his 
hand. He is little, wrinkled, and old, but 
there is a glint in his eye and a quick smile 
about his mouth, and something very 
kindly in the atmosphere about him. 
There is a little old woman with very 
white hair, who also belongs in this 
kitchen. She does not seem to weigh over 
ninety pounds, is quite bent, and her sabots 
go click-clack over the wooden floor, but he 
is so used to them that they do not interrupt 
the breviary. I always feel like breathing 
carefully when she goes by, lest I might up- 
set her. I must not forget the other mem- 
ber of the household: there is a fat old cat 
• — as fat as the others are thin — who always 
begins to purr when I come in. She was 
not “gentille” to-day, for she bit and purred 
at the same time, which is not playing the 
game. 

The little old lady now keeps house for 
the priest. She is his sister, and time was 
when she was “religieuse” and lived in the 


PADRE 


301 


convent. But in 1903 they closed up the 
convents and turned out their inmates, and 
so the little old lady, who had had no other 
home since she was twenty years of age — 
she is now seventy-two, two years older than 
her brother. Monsieur l’Abbe Leveaux — 
came back to her brother to live. 

Four years ago the Germans came down 
to St. Mihiel. Rumors preceded them. 
Refugees came through this town with tales 
and stories, and the townspeople began to 
pack up their goods and chattels, close their 
houses, get what conveyances they could, 
and move back into safer parts of France. 

The little old priest and the little old sis- 
ter watched them go. The church was 
pretty empty that next Sunday, but there 
were some there, and they stayed on. One 
night a Boche ’plane came over and dropped 
a bomb on his garden. It blew out twenty 
feet of his stone wall, broke every window 
in that side of his house and pockmarked the 
front with flying bits of steel. He closed 


302 


PADRE 


the blinds, pasted paper over the empty win- 
dow frames to keep out the rain and the 
snow, moved his bed to the other side of the 
house and went on about his daily work. 
Another night a little cafe across the street 
showed an incautious gleam of light ; a 
Boche ’plane saw it and dropped a bomb 
that went clear through to the cellar and ex- 
ploded. Curiously enough, although the 
cafe was quite full of soldiers, no one was 
hurt, but most of the windows in the priest’s 
house that looked upon the cafe were broken 
by that bomb. He could not move again, 
so he just pasted up the windows with paper, 
moved his bed against the opposite wall, and 
thanked the good God that the next Boche 
’plane could not break any more windows! 

A few days later, five children were sitting 
on the low stone wall that surrounds a little 
park which lies beneath the windows of the 
priest’s house. A shell struck ten feet away 
— you can still see the depression in the 
ground — and then there were no more little 


PADRE 


303 


children sitting on the stone wall. A small 
“gamin’’ who was playing about fifty feet 
down the road lay down very quietly, and 
when the soldiers came they picked him up 
and carried him into the house, and the 
priest buried them all. 

He has quite a little garden beside his 
house. He has worked it all alone — there 
was no one to help — raising vegetables and a 
few flowers. From time to time the Ger- 
mans shelled the railroad, and one morning 
as he was working there fifty shells burst 
along the track, perhaps eight hundred feet 
away. 

I went for him again to-day, for there is 
another boy seriously ill in Ward F who 
wants to see the priest. He invited me to 
take a “petit tour” with him, and we walked 
around by the station. As we passed the 
little park before his house he showed me 
where two bombs had dropped from a Boche 
’plane one night, but without exploding. 
The shock broke more windows and shook 


PADRE 


SO 4 

some stucco off the nearest house, but did 
no further damage. The French engineers 
came along, buried the two bombs where 
they fell, and then exploded them. So he 
told me the “story of the scars” as we walked 
along, why this house had no roof, why 
that house had no wall, how a shell had 
sliced a corner from that house and broken 
the front of another. He told me who was 
killed here, and who was killed there, their 
names and their histories. We went in and 
out of quaint streets, alleys, gardens and, 
finally, came back to the Hospital. As we 
walked up the road that leads to the wards, 
I asked him how many shells in all had 
fallen in Commercy. He said that he did 
not know, but he had himself seen one hun- 
dred and sixteen fall in one afternoon, one 
hundred and seven in another afternoon, and 
seventy-three in a third, but how many had 
fallen in all he did not know. 

He saw, four years ago, the civilian popu- 
lation hurriedly leave the town; he saw the 


PADRE 


305 


soldiers come — the army of France — to dig 
trenches, string barbed wire, and establish 
their line of defense only about a mile and 
a half from his house; he heard all the roar 
of battle, felt the shock of falling shells, and 
saw the wounded coming back from the field. 
To-day he stood by my side with a quiet, con- 
tented smile on his quizzical face and 
watched the French army go streaming by 
— Infantry, Artillery, Engineers, Cavalry, 
with their camions and supply trains, their 
field kitchens, and all the rest of their im- 
pedimenta, streaming eastward along all the 
roads to take possession of Alsace-Lor- 
raine, of Germany! One must have lived 
for four years as he has lived to be able to 
fathom the meaning of that little smile. 

Then we went on to the Hospital, where 
I put a mask over his face, for we were vis- 
iting the Pneumonia Ward, and a moment 
later he was ministering his priestly comfort, 
in his few English words, to an American 
boy from Massachusetts. The next time I 


306 


PADRE 


have to go for him, he tells me, we will take 
a walk along the River Meuse, which flows 
through Commercy, but which I have not 
yet discovered. 

November 21, 1918. 

II 

I am quartered in one of the many houses 
of Commercy that were evacuated by their 
occupants when the Germans came down to 
St. Mihiel four years ago and began drop- 
ping bombs and shells all around the town. 
It is quite empty, except for a French 
Colonel who has a room upstairs and whom 
I never see or hear, and a little, elderly 
French couple, who are acting as caretakers. 

Their home is at Igney, near Avricourt 
and on the road to Strassburg, some fifteen 
hundred meters from the old frontiers of 
Germany. On the twenty-ninth of July, 
1914, five days before the declaration of war, 
they saw the German Uhlans violate the 
French frontier and pass through their little 


PADRE 


m 


village. Eight or ten days later a French 
patrol came through, stopping at their doors 
in search of food. Monsieur took them to an- 
other house on the outskirts of the village, 
where the horses could be hidden in a barn 
and coff ee served in a little inner room, win- 
do wless and dark. He watched the patrol 
ride away, with a “Merci” and a wave of the 
hand. The next day all but two were dead. 
One was a prisoner, one had escaped, one 
was lying in the ditch with a Uhlan’s spear 
transfixing him to the ground, and four were 
lying in the road. They had met and given 
battle to a heavier German patrol — on 
French soil! 

For some little time life in the village 
seems to have gone on in much the same old 
w r ay, although they were behind German 
lines. But after the declaration of the 
blockade the Germans ordered the old men 
and women, the children and the infirm, to 
assemble at the church, with all their neces- 
sary baggage, on the following afternoon. 


308 


PADRE 


There they were all tagged and ticketed, 
with labels pinned to their breasts, “Comme 
les moutons pour l’abbatoir,” as Madame 
said, and then sent to Switzerland, to be re- 
turned to France. The little old lady was 
one among many who were thus sent away, 
but Monsieur was still vigorous, and able 
to work in the fields for Germany, where- 
for the two were separated, and he went 
back alone to a very empty house that night. 

Still, life was not so very hard. He re- 
ceived neither pay nor rations; he worked 
in the fields from seven until eleven, and 
from one until five. But one day out of 
every three was given him for work in his 
own garden, and Sunday was a day of rest. 
Every month the Mayor went to the town 
of Cirey, where the American Red Cross 
gave him supplies for the forty-two French- 
men who remained in Igney, and so they 
managed to exist. Last spring he was sent 
to Belgium and then, some months later, 
back through Germany to Switzerland, and 


PADRE 


309 


so he made his way at last to Commercy and 
joined his wife, after over three years of 
separation. 

They had two sons, both in the French 
army, but one was taken prisoner in the fall 
of 1914, and the other fell into German 
hands last July. The news has just come 
to us that Henri, the last to be captured, es- 
caped from a German prison on the thir- 
teenth of October. That is all we know. 
Whether he succeeded in making his way to 
Belgium or to Holland, whether he died on 
the road, was killed by the electric wires that 
guard the Dutch frontier, whether he will 
knock at the door to-morrow, or whether he 
is to be just one more of the many mysteries 
that only thfe Judgment Day shall solve we 
do not know. The little old lady spoke 
quite hopelessly of her boys the other day, 
and I tried to comfort her with the thought 
that the war was over and the prisoners 
would soon be coming home. “Mais, Mon- 
sieur, ils ont ete quatre ans en Allemagne, 


310 


PADRE 


et les repatries sont tous tuberculeux, tous, 
tous !” I stared at my fire, for there was a 
timbre in her voice that warned me not to 
look. Then, in a moment, the same serene 
and steady voice was asking if there was 
anything that Monsieur desired, for, with 
his permission, she was going to see her sis- 
ter, but would return at four o’clock. 

They take rare good care of me. I think, 
perhaps, they give me a little extra care, be- 
cause I belong to that Red Cross which 
meant so much to them throughout those 
hard years in Germany. Monsieur comes 
into my room every morning at half past 
six, lights my fire, takes my shoes and put- 
tees, brings me my shaving water, and then 
opens my blinds. He is my alarm clock, 
necessary, persistent, and far more courte- 
ous than Big Ben. 

F or the past several days, however, I have 
been awakened, not by him, but by the sound 
of marching feet and rolling wheels in the 
street beyond my darkened blinds. I knew 


PADRE 


311 


exactly what those sounds meant — the 
F rench army was marching by ! Then Mon- 
sieur has come in, put my hot water on the 
table, more wood on the fire, opened the 
blinds, and gone out with a parting “C’est 
presque sept heures. Monsieur.” So I have 
dressed, and watched at the same time that 
which I shall never forget. Infantry, Cav- 
alry, Artillery, hour after hour and morn- 
ing after morning, the French army is 
marching by. I did not understand at first, 
for I have seen these troops, or others just 
like them, marching along these roads in the 
other direction, towards Verdun and the 
Verdun front. When I saw them march- 
ing back I thought the French army was 
going home. But yesterday I learned that 
these men in the weather-worn blue were 
traveling the roads that lead to Lorraine — 
this is the French Army of Occupation, go- 
ing towards the Rhine. They are pouring 
out over all the roads. Some go past my 
windows, round the bend and climb the hill ; 


PADRE 


312 

others branch off at the market place, and 
later I see them following the road on the 
other side of the valley — faint, slow-moving 
dots in the distance. The Infantry go along 
at a route step, with the skirts of their long 
blue overcoats buttoned back, that they may 
step off freely. The officers are either on 
horseback or walk at the side, most of these 
with a cane. The packs are heavy; their 
casques rattle against their canteens as they 
dangle from their belts ; they are unshaven, 
splashed with old mud, but there is some 
singing, much laughing, for the War is over 
—and THEY ARE GOING TO LOR- 
RAINE! 

It is not a pretty army, but it is very busi- 
ness-like and I do not think that I should 
care to try to stop it from going to Lorraine. 
The horses are very rough of coat, it is many 
a day since they have been curried and 
groomed, but I have not seen a single lame 
horse go by. Their camions are all horse 
drawn; I have seen no automobile camions 


PADRE 


313 


go through, and they look like the wagons 
of wandering gypsies, with bicycles fastened 
on in front or behind, poles sticking out at 
the rear, dingy colored sacks piled high, and 
every kind of seeming junk in evidence. 
The brakes were long since worn out, and 
most of them now have old shoes fastened 
on to replace the worn brakes, the hobnails 
of the soles quite shiny from the friction of 
the wheels. This morning the heavy artil- 
lery was rumbling along, the “cent cin- 
quante cinqs.” Their camouflage of blues 
and yellows was faded and dingy, bunches of 
dead grass covered their long barrels, and 
the ten horses that drew each gun were, like 
all the rest, long of hair and unkempt of 
coat. But these guns had helped save 
France, and for reward they were going to 
Lorraine. Behind the guns came more 
gypsy wagons with the field telegraph equip- 
ments ; then came the materials for the En- 
gineers, some of the wagons marked “Ex- 
plosif,” and others bearing the heavy boats 


314 


PADRE 


for the pontoon bridges, these, too, painted 
with dingy blues and yellows. 

When I went to breakfast the army was 
rolling on, up the hill and over the crest 
towards the east, following the road 
towards Metz. Also, they were filling the 
village street as far as the eye could see, a 
rolling, wavering mass of blue. When I 
came back again the street was still full, 
but now with little Indo-Chinese, all in uni- 
form and with carefully blackened teeth. 
They had just halted as I passed, and I went 
out and spoke to them. Many understood 
French, and soon some fifty had gathered 
around me. Whatever remark I made wa % 
promptly translated into Chinese, and then 
all fifty began to speak at once. When that 
remark had received full justice, they fell 
silent and waited for the next. Some of 
these men have souvenirs of the War that 
they are glad to sell — belts, helmets, trench 
knives, that were once the property of the 


PADRE 


315 


Boche. These men had little — a gold ring 
with a seal of some kind, a German coin, 
these were all that they could boast. Then 
the order to march was given, and the little 
men started on, pushing or pulling the small 
two-wheeled carts in which the impedimenta 
of the regiment had been gathered. 

I fully expect to see the parade that will 
take place when Peace is signed and the vic- 
torious armies march through Paris. I saw 
the parade on the Fourteenth of last July, 
when the Allies, French and American, 
English, Scotch, Irish and Welsh, Canadi- 
ans, Australians and New Zealanders, the 
Belgians, Poles, Czecho- Slovaks, Italians, 
Serbians, Montenegrins, Greeks, and Por- 
tuguese marched up the Avenue de la 
Grande Armee, turned off before they 
reached the Arc de Triomphe, and came, by 
another road than the Champs Elysees, to 
the Place de la Concorde, for only a vic- 
torious army may pass through that Arch. 


316 


PADRE 


I intend to see them when next they march 
through Paris and go through that Arch and 
not around it. 

But that will be an army spick and span. 
Boots and puttees will be polished; belts and 
all leather work will be well groomed, buck- 
les burnished ; gun barrels and bayonets will 
flash and reflect the sun; there will be ban- 
ners and plumes, and all the pomp of an 
army on parade. 

But the army that I have seen marching 
past my windows, unshaven and unshorn, 
splashed with mud, dingy and stained, with 
its unsightly wagons and its uncurried 
horses — this is the real army. They are not 
on parade, they are not intended as a spec- 
tacle, they have come from the field of bat- 
tle, and they are going to Lorraine. 

I may forget, as memory weakens, that 
which I hope to see in Paris, but I do not 
think I shall ever forget this which I have 
seen passing along Commercy’s streets, in 


PADRE 


317 


the red sunrise lights of these November 
days, with the hoar-frost on the ground. 

P. S. — December 3d: Henri knocked on 
the kitchen door at six o’clock this morning! 


CHAPTER XVIII 


W HEN Evacuation 13 was relieved I 
was assigned back to Base Hospital 
101 at St. Nazaire. I was more 
than ready to return, for hereafter the move- 
ments would be from East to West, from 
the old front lines towards the base ports, 
and the Hospital at St. Nazaire would be- 
come more important than ever before. I 
stayed on with Base 91 until their applica- 
tion for a chaplain had been made and pre- 
sumably another was on the way. I was 
pretty well tired out, but how tired I did 
not know until I reached Paris and the 
strain was suddenly lifted. I had not 
thought of taking a furlough when I left 
Commercy, but the day after I reached 
Paris the Red Cross sent me to the Riviera 
for a fortnight’s rest. 

318 


PADRE 


319 


Two days after my arrival in Paris, while 
I was waiting for my papers, President Wil- 
son came to attend the preliminary meet- 
ings of the Peace Conference. The hotels 
were packed, and I was occupying my cous- 
in’s apartment on the Champs Elysees. 
From the balcony here I could look up the 
street to the Arc de Triomphe and down al- 
most to the Place de la Concorde. 

When I opened my blinds at eight 
o’clock on the morning of the President’s 
arrival the crowds were already beginning 
to gather. The day was overcast, but not by 
rain clouds. I think this was the only rain- 
less day we had in Paris during the five or 
six that I spent there at this time. The 
Avenue was brilliant with flags, mostly 
French and American, of course, but every 
Allied nation was represented. I was told 
that France had spent forty million francs 
in decorating the city for the reception of 
the President. 

As I returned from breakfast the crowds 


320 


PADRE 


were pouring into the Champs Elysees from 
all the cross streets and hunting for points 
of vantage. Vendors were selling small 
American flags; others had chairs to hire, 
or carts which they had wheeled into place 
between the sidewalk and the curb, and on 
which they were selling standing room; oth- 
ers still had brought V-shaped ladders 
which they sold by the rung. The Avenue 
was lined on both sides by German cannon 
captured in the recent fighting, and spec- 
tators had usurped places on the wheels and 
barrels of these queerly painted guns. Of 
course, men and boys had climbed into all 
the trees along the route of march. I saw 
one man in boots and a long overcoat 
“shinny” up a fairly tall tree and establish 
himself in the top branches. The houses 
across the way were packed with French 
civilians and American officers and men, who 
filled the windows and balconies and 
stretched out all along the roofs. 

The entire route, from the depot to the 


PADRE 


321 

Presidential residence, had been lined with 
French troops in their steel helmets and with 
bayonets fixed, while here and there squads 
of Cavalry had been drawn up on the side- 
walks, in the rear of the crowds that bor- 
dered the curbs. 

Some time before the President’s train 
was due I heard the crowd cheering noisily 
and went to the window to see why. A 
small fox terrier had gotten out into the mid- 
dle of the street, where he was being hailed 
by the multitude. The uproar frightened 
him, but the packed sidewalks blocked es- 
cape on the right hand or the left ; only the 
way to the Place de la Concorde seemed 
open, so he started down the street. As he 
ran the cheers grew louder and the scare 
correspondingly bigger. He was picking 
up his feet as fast as he knew how as he shot 
past my windows. The royal welcome of 
the crowd pursued him from behind and rose 
to greet him from in front; I could hear it 


322 PADRE 

even from the far distance of the Place de 
la Concorde. 

A few minutes later a larger brown dog, 
of uncertain race and nationality, adven- 
turing the same path, experienced the same 
welcome and the same scare, and repeated 
the same mad dash amidst the same wild en- 
thusiasm. 

Shortly before eleven o’clock the band 
struck up the Marseillaise, and the troops 
along the Avenue presented arms as Presi- 
dent and Madame Poincare, M. Clemen- 
ceau, and others representing both the 
French Government and the American Ex- 
peditionary Force drove by on theij: way to 
meet the President at the depot. Another 
wait, and then we heard the guns booming 
out the presidential salute and knew that 
the train from Brest had reached the station. 

Then the head of the procession came in 
sight, mounted dragoons stretching in a line 
across the road and in single file along the 
curbs. The carriages followed the escort, 


PADRE 


323 


President Wilson with President Poincare, 
M. Clemenceau and General Pershing 
among many others. The crowds went 
wild ; flags were waving from the street, the 
windows, roofs, and balconies. The cheers 
rang out until all Paris echoed them, for 
this man represented the nation whose troops 
had stopped the German drive at Chateau- 
Thierry, had broken their hold on St. Mi- 
hiel, captured Sedan, swept over the Hin- 
denburg line, and cleared their side of the 
Argonne. 

The carriages passed quickly by. Then 
the troops fell into line and marched off; 
the crowds poured out into the avenue, fill- 
ing it with a swirling mass, but it was long 
before the echoes of trampling feet died out 
and the Champs Elysees resumed its accus- 
tomed calm. 

On December sixteenth I left Paris for 
Cannes, but before reaching there certain in- 
fluenza germs that I had picked up some- 
where became riotous, so I took my luggage 


PADRE 


SU 

and went to Camp Hospital 53 on the 
Avenue de la Prado, Marseilles. Here I 
was pleasantly surprised by finding two doc- 
tors who had been for a little time at St. 
Nazaire, two of the nurses from Base 101, 
and two orderlies who had been patients in 
that hospital while I was there — one I re- 
membered well as an appendix case in Ward 
2. They all gave me a welcome and the best 
of care. 

After the doctor had examined me and 
the usual hospital card had been fastened to 
my bed I seized the opportunity, being left 
alone, to crawl down to the foot of the bed, 
read that card, and know just what they 
thought of me. My hand wasn’t very 
steady and it took a little effort and some 
time, but when I finally got the card out of 
its envelope it read “N.Y.D.” — “Not Yet 
Determined,” and it stayed “N.Y.D.” to the 
end of my visit there. 

Now I had an opportunity to see the Bed 
Cross in a new light, from the point of view 


PADRE 


325 


of the patient, and I know from personal ex- 
perience what that organization meant to 
the thousands of sick and wounded for whom 
it cared. They brought me books and 
magazines, fruit and flowers ; they broke the 
monotony of the day by many little visits. 
When I was convalescent they secured my 
ticket and reserved my seat on the train to 
Cannes, and also engaged a room for me 
at the hotel. Just before I left Marseilles 
Chaplain Lenington came for me in a Red 
Cross automobile and took me over the 
Corniche Road. One of the orderlies who 
had been a patient at St. Nazaire brought 
me an American Beauty rose each morning 
until his funds gave out, so when I left the 
hospital I saw to it that “his ship was afloat” 
once more. I was always glad to see these 
two boys, and they visited me every day. 
Sometimes they would take my hand and 
cheer me up with an awesome whisper, “Gee, 
Chaplain, but you’re hot to-night.” How- 


326 


PADRE 


ever, in about ten days I was able to go to 
Cannes. 

The Y.M.C.A. were doing a splendid 
work here. They had taken over some of 
the finest hotels for the accommodation of 
enlisted men who had been sent here to re- 
cover from wounds or illnesses; they had 
taken the palatial Casino and turned it into 
a club for privates and non-commissioned 
officers. Every afternoon a concert was 
given here, and also a moving picture show ; 
two or three times a week a theatrical troupe 
gave an entertainment in the theater. They 
had installed billiard and pool tables and one 
of the best libraries for the soldiers that I 
saw anywhere in France. Another hand- 
some building, with a terrace looking out 
over the Mediterranean, belonging to the 
Cannes Yacht Club, had been turned into 
an Officers’ Club by the same organization. 

After ten days here I was able to return 
to Paris, where I was invalided home, sail- 


PADRE 


327 


ing from Bordeaux on the twentieth of 
January. 

And so the tale ends. I am back in my 
library once more with my books around me, 
but above the cases runs a row of German 
helmets, with one American casque that I 
picked up in the ruins of Verdun. It is cov- 
ered with mud, and some unknown owner 
has scratched through that covering of white 
clay the Y encircled by a D which tells me 
that it belonged once to some boy of the Yan- 
kee Division. 

On the mantel lie the top of a trench peri- 
scope, two German belts bearing their lying 
motto, “Gott mit Uns,” an Austrian trench- 
knife, and other souvenirs. 

A fire is burning on the hearth, for these 
early spring days are cool, a wood fire 
wherein one may see so many pictures, and 
as I watch the flicker of the flames or the 
glow amid the embers I see again the long 
wards, the rows of white beds with their re- 
membered faces. Or, as the flames shift, T 


328 


PADRE 


see the sunlight falling on the waters where 
the Loire joins the sea; ships sail in or ships 
sail out, but the eye falls elsewhere, for all 
around are the rows of white crosses, rank 
behind rank, where they rest who surely 
fought a good fight and finished their course. 
Or again I see other rows of crosses where 
the chill November rains are falling along 
the valley of the Meuse ; the mists rise from 
the river, and the encircling hills reecho the 
mournful notes of Taps. And something 
deep within me rises in salute 

“To those who fought and lived. 

To those who fought and died. 

To those who gave much 
And to those who gave all.” 





AUG 215 


1919 



